


Last Peace

by SocksAreArgyle



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Family, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pregnancy, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Toph (Avatar), Trans Zuko (Avatar), in short: sokka and zuko fall in love get married and have kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 51,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27550249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SocksAreArgyle/pseuds/SocksAreArgyle
Summary: For the next several days, Zuko thinks about how Sokka never let go of his hand as they walked down the dark, winding halls of the palace.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 201





	1. I'm right here

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i have only watched both atla and lok, and have not consumed any other media put out about this universe! this takes place right after the end of atla, and i've changed a few things that don't exactly line up with the canon of lok. just had the characters make some different decisions that felt more right, for lack of a better word.
> 
> also i did not do a lot of research into how a government like that of the fire nation would work (the fandom wiki only gave me so much info lol), so sorry if things don't make sense! i tired to keep things relatively vague and only delved into things that would be easier to tackle. after all, this is all make believe, so it doesn't really matter how accurate to life it is :p 
> 
> overall this was just a fun thing i started writing after watching atla again a few months ago when it had its resurgence, and i'm by no means a great writer, this was mostly just for me to get my thoughts out! i would've kept it to myself, but it turned out so long i had to post it somewhere. i hope you enjoy :3

This is still weird. Really, really weird.

In fairness, it had only been a few days, but Sokka couldn’t stop himself from flinching every time Zuko approached them at camp. Sokka couldn’t really tell how that made Zuko feel, because he somehow manages to keep himself exceptionally neutral except for when he’s angry. Sokka, on the other hand, is starting to feel guilty about it.

After Zuko and Aang returned from their visit to the Sun Warrior ruins, the former seemed to be settling in a bit more easily. Aang made an effort to make him feel welcome, comfortable, and worked to keep squabbles with Katara to a minimum. He still had his outbursts, but he was controlling them. They wouldn’t last as long, and often times it would take more than the usual few jabs to get him worked up.

But, most importantly, Sokka noticed how gentle he was becoming with Aang. Zuko was a good teacher, and while he could be strict and yelled at times, Aang was receptive to him and his methods. That’s all any of them could really ask for, anyway.

Sokka saunters to their corner of the air temple one morning, boomerang sheathed and hung on his hip, a selection of nuts in his hand for a snack. “Mind if I watch you two jerk bend?” he asks around a mouthful.

He catches the way Zuko’s shoulders tense for a moment, but he simply sighs. “Whatever, just don’t get in our way.”

By now, Aang was getting the hang of fire bending, and Sokka makes a surprised noise when a huge plume of flame erupts from his palms, casting them all in momentary orange light and warmth. He gives Aang a nod to say ‘impressive’ and the kid beams at him.

“That was good, but your form was slightly off,” Zuko explains, before taking a position alongside the Avatar. “Keep your feet planted farther apart, you’ll be steadier that way. You won’t get knocked off balance, and you’ll be able to control your flame more.”

Aang listens intently, watching as his teacher demonstrates, and Zuko steps back with an encouraging nod as Aang takes his improved stance and creates another stream of fire. This time it’s more direct, a thinner flame that reaches farther. Sokka hums again, impressed, and Aang is yelling excitedly about finally getting it right, but suddenly Sokka can’t hear what the kid’s saying, because he’s too caught up in the way Zuko is smiling like a proud older brother. Far brighter than Sokka’s ever seen before, and it kind of takes his breath away.

* * *

“Hey.”

The raspy voice comes as a surprise, and Sokka looks up from where he’s sharpening his sword to see Zuko standing over him. 

“Hey, what’s up?” Sokka asks, before going back to working with his hands. Zuko’s feet shuffle in front of him, so he peeks back up at the prince. He almost looks constipated with nerves, and Sokka bites back a smile. “Lemur got your tongue there, big guy?”

He can feel Zuko bristle. It sends out a minuscule wave of heat, the warmth settling momentarily on his forearms.

“Listen, I just wanted to ask you if you wanted to spar,” he spits, though there’s no real bite to it, and Sokka’s eyebrows shoot up as he properly looks back up at the boy. That reaction makes Zuko roll his eyes. “Whatever, forget I asked.”

He turns to walk away, fists clenched at his sides. “No, no, wait!” Sokka sputters, reaching out to grab at the hem of Zuko’s shirt, keeping him in place. “Sorry, I just… didn’t expect you to ask that.”

Zuko huffs, but no longer tries to escape the situation, which seems like a good sign. Sokka stands up, setting aside his sharpening stone and sheathes his sword. He levels Zuko with a toothy grin that’s more genuine than even he expected. He catches a flicker of… _something_ in Zuko’s eyes, but he can’t place it before Zuko turns on his heel and walks across the courtyard, adjusting his own scabbard slung over his shoulder. “I know a good place we can go.”

Sokka follows at Zuko’s heel without further question, the two of them winding down staircases and through halls until they come to a big landing, similar to where their current camp is, but without the large fountain in the center. This one is also at a lower level, and the fog from the canyon makes the air a little cooler.

He lets out a low whistle. “Man, how’d you find this place?”

Zuko just shrugs when he turns to face him. “I was wandering around one night when I couldn’t sleep and stumbled across it,” he says, and Sokka would take a moment to be concerned about the lack-of-sleep comment, but Zuko draws his dual swords and takes a fighting stance. “I didn’t realize you were a swordsman.”

With a grin, Sokka unsheathes his astutely named Space Sword, the black metal gleaming in the afternoon light. “Well, this one’s new,” he drawls, “Made it myself.”

He finds immense satisfaction in the way Zuko’s eyes widen. “So you’re a blacksmith, too?” he presses as they start in a sideways step, circling each other, weapons at the ready.

“Not really,” Sokka admits with a sheepish grin, “Had some help from my Master, but I was in charge of keeping the fire going and making the final shape and all that.”

Zuko hums interestedly, but then lunges with his right arm thrust forward. Sokka catches him with a smooth swipe of his sword, the sound of metal on metal scraping through the canyon. With a practiced side-step, Zuko lunges again with his left arm, which Sokka avoids by bowing sideways, then brings his sword back down in a high arch. Zuko blocks him by crossing his swords above his head. Their gazes meet, and Zuko’s eyes flash before he twists his wrists with a grunt, blades circling against Sokka’s and pushing him a few paces backward, nearly throwing him off balance.

Sokka is still getting the hang of actual swordsmanship, and Zuko is clearly more experienced than he. Rather than get discouraged, though, Sokka takes it as a challenge. If he could knock the prince of the Fire Nation flat on his ass, it would be the greatest day of his life. 

“You’re pretty good,” Zuko says, and pride blooms in Sokka’s chest, showing in a big, toothy smile, but then Zuko adds, “For a newbie.”

With a huff, Sokka scowls. The fact that it seems like Zuko is actually toying with him, given that the comment came from behind a crooked grin, makes Sokka flush. “Oh yeah?” he asks, before charging at his sparring partner, sword pointed low to the ground. In a flash, right as Zuko shifts his weight to dodge and bring his own blades down, Sokka ducks to his left.

He catches a glimmer of surprise in Zuko’s eyes, and Sokka thinks he’s won this round. He swings his sword upward, knocking one of Zuko’s blades to the ground with a loud clatter. Sokka grins, tongue poking out from between his teeth, but before he can act further, the wind is knocked out of him.

Zuko steps forward with his full weight, leaning in close till his shoulder makes contact with Sokka’s chest. With a heavy _oof_ , Sokka stumbles backward till he lands on his ass, sword clanging against the stone a few feet away. He blinks loudly, gathering his jostled mind soon enough to register the tip of Zuko’s blade a few inches from his throat.

The prince is staring down at him, a subdued smile on his face. “Hah, I win.”

Sokka pouts, bringing a hand to his chest to rub his new sore spot. Even though Zuko was only one year older than him, he was already built far more heavily than anyone else in the gang. “Damn, that hurt, dude.”

To his surprise, Zuko winces a little on his behalf. “Sorry,” he mumbles, and it’s not disingenuous. He pulls back his blade and reaches out with his free hand. Sokka can feel how callused his fingers are when he takes it to stand. He idly wonders if all fire benders have rough hands, like how earth benders tend to. 

As soon as he’s on his feet, Zuko quickly pulls his hand away before retrieving their fallen blades. Strangely, Sokka finds himself wishing the grasp had lingered. “You surprised me, though.”

“Huh?”

Zuko huffs amusedly at his eloquence. “You’ re pretty good with a sword, really,” Zuko elaborates, and a smile tugs at Sokka’s lips. The comment is genuine, and Zuko meets him with a soft smile of his own as he hands over Sokka’s blade. 

Sokka makes to say thank you, but is cut off by the sound of Aang’s voice echoing down around them. “There you guys are!” he shouts, landing lightly on his feet as he shuts his glider, “We’ve been looking for you, lunch is almost ready!”

As if to answer for all of them, Sokka’s stomach growls loudly. Even so, he points an accusatory finger at Zuko, who arches a brow at him. Sokka grins. “Next time, I won’t lose.”

* * *

After visiting the Boiling Rock, Sokka was more than pleased with their decision to add Zuko to their group. Especially now that he got to see his father and Suki again. 

For Zuko, it was strange seeing Sokka and Suki together. Not that they didn’t make a cute couple, but something close to jealousy curled hotly in his chest every time they were affectionate in front of everybody. Ultimately, he figured it was just because he missed Mai, that he was with a group of people who still only half-trusted him, and he hadn’t received any real human affection in what felt like years. It might as well have been that long, honestly. He was craving it, and watching the two of them mack on each other around the campfire made him feel like shit.

It was made even worse when all the kids left on Appa, after Azula tracked them down to the air temple, and they were camping on that grassy hillside. He just wanted to find a way to get through to Katara.

While their little field trip didn’t go as originally planned, he finally had Katara’s trust. He didn’t need to walk on eggshells all the time, she actually talked to him, served him food, and laughed at his bad jokes (or, rather, laughed at him because of his bad jokes, but it wasn’t laced with venom like before). 

That night, he finally felt like he could be comfortable around them all. He still tensed when they poked fun at him, and bit back a grimace from time to time, but as the night went on, after they’d all eaten a hot meal and had some tea, he found himself relaxing. 

He was exhausted which helped, too. Across the fire, Toph lets out a loud, unapologetic yawn, which Zuko finds himself mirroring behind his hand.

“Yeah, maybe we should all get some sleep,” Katara hums, rubbing one of her eyes with her knuckle.

Beside her, Sokka and Suki are laying on the ground, sides pressed together as they share one of their blankets. “I’m tempted to sleep out here,” Suki confesses with a laugh, admiring the stars glimmering overhead.

Everyone follows her gaze. It really was beautiful, and Zuko wishes he’d taken more time in his life to admire the things that many people took for granted. At least he was still young, he thinks to himself, he had time to admire it. When he brings his gaze back down, everyone is still looking up at the sky. He peeks at Sokka out of the corner of his eye, but quickly looks away when Sokka’s gaze falls back to the campfire as well.

“It’ll be just like old times!” Aang says excitedly as he curls up farther into Appa’s leg fur.

As much as Zuko’s gut instinct is to distance himself, to listen to the voice in his head that says he’s unwelcome, he simply grabs his blankets from his tent and drags them outside onto the grass. Nobody gives him a strange look or makes a negative comment, which helps to stifle that nasty train of thought. With everyone shifting around, he ends up next to Sokka, who’s talking quietly to Suki and laughing.

Zuko stares up at the sky again, catching sight of a few constellations he knows offhand, but soon finds his eyelids too heavy to keep open. Next to him, he hears Sokka shift around under his blanket, but he doesn’t open his eyes to look. If he did, he would have caught Sokka glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. 

Rather than his usual tossing and turning, Zuko finds himself falling asleep very quickly. As everyone’s breathing starts coming up loud, slow, and even, Zuko is unaware of Sokka silently admiring how handsome the prince of the Fire Nation really is.

* * *

The next night, Sokka insists on sleeping outside again, but makes a point to call it a ‘boys night’ and tells the girls they should all sleep in the big tent together while they stayed out under the stars. Any question of why was just met with lots of shushing and shrill because-I-want-to’s from Sokka.

Aang was quick to agree to sleep outside again, but he almost always slept outside with Appa anyway. Zuko probably would’ve said no, but Sokka gave him these over-exaggerated puppy dog eyes and clasped his hands in front of his chest. He reluctantly agreed, and Sokka let out a loud _whoop_ of success that sent a few birds scattering nearby.

It’s a nice night, at least, with no threat of rain and only a few wisps of clouds surround the moon. It was late now, and the girls had all gone to bed almost an hour ago, but somehow Sokka is still blabbering on about some old Southern Water Tribe stories and superstitions. Aang is nearly on the edge of his seat listening to Sokka poorly recount these tales that could be dramatic if told by the right person. Regardless of Sokka’s poor storytelling, Zuko finds himself amused by the whole situation. 

“And _that_ is how my dad escaped from the giant otter penguin!”

“Woah,” Aang whispers, genuinely in awe. Zuko can’t help how he lets out a snort of laughter, which Sokka rolls his eyes at.

“Well, fine, I guess that’s enough stories for tonight then,” Sokka says while sticking his tongue out at Zuko. He stretches his arms over his head with a hearty yawn, grumbling happily when his back pops loudly in a few places.

Zuko hums. “Yeah, we should get some rest, I have some new fire bending moves I want to teach you tomorrow,” he says pointedly to Aang, who gives him an excited smile.

“Can’t wait, Sifu Hotman!” he beams, and Zuko rolls his eyes, but can’t help smiling all the same. 

With that, after a few half-hearted goodnights, they each drift off one by one. Unlike the night before, Zuko finds himself struggling to fall asleep, his restless mind keeping him at sleep’s edge far longer than he enjoys. It’s not unusual for him to toss and turn, but it’s frustrating all the same. It’s only when he focuses on the sound of the wind through the tall grass, and the idle breathing of his companions, that he can finally drift off.

That rest doesn’t last long, though.

Sokka stirs awake, letting out a little grumble about whatever seems to have dragged him out of his slumber. It takes a few moments of rubbing his eyes and perking up his ears to register what it is. Next to him, twitching on his sleeping mat, Zuko’s breath is coming quick and sharp, accentuated by a low whimper every few seconds.

Normally Sokka would leave him to make noises in his sleep as he dreams, but his heart clenches. Zuko’s face is screwed up in pain and fear, and the longer he sleeps, the more he curls in on himself. His hands fist in his blankets, and he lets out a particularly sharp gasp that has Sokka startling to attention.

“Zuko! Zuko, wake up,” he says softly, gently grabbing at the prince’s shoulder to shake him awake.

In his sleep, Zuko flinches and tries to pull away, his brow knotting together.

“Zuko!” Sokka hisses, this time a bit louder, and jostles him with both hands.

“Whuh!?” Zuko nearly shouts, sitting bolt upright. Sokka startles and recoils his hands when wisps of flame flash from Zuko’s fingertips. Beside them, some lasting embers in their long-extinguished fire flare up before fading again.

Sokka raises his hands in front of himself, hovering around Zuko, not quite sure what to do. “Hey, hey, woah, it’s okay,” he says softly, voice low, “It seemed like you were having a nightmare. You okay?”

After what feels like an eternity, Zuko makes eye contact with Sokka and the tension begins to leave his posture. He slumps forward, letting out a soft groan as he tucks his knees to his chest and rests his forehead against them.

“I’m fine,” he mumbles, but the way his voice shakes says otherwise.

Tentatively, Sokka reaches out to touch Zuko’s forearm, giving it a gentle squeeze. Zuko tenses momentarily, but doesn’t push him away.

“Are you okay?” Sokka asks again, genuinely concerned for his friend — yes, his _friend_. His brow knits together, and he leans forward to try and catch Zuko’s eye and pull him out of hiding. He’s never seen Zuko like this before, and it’s a little unnerving. Usually Zuko would get defensive, likely stand up and storm off to get away from questions and prying eyes, pretend it was frivolous and nobody needed to worry, but the way he just sits there and says nothing makes nerves twist hotly in Sokka’s stomach.

It takes another moment, but Zuko finally sits up a bit more, resting his chin on his knees so he can see Sokka’s face. It’s creased with concern and anxiety.

“I’m fine. Just a nightmare,” he says again, but his voice still wavers.

Sokka chews on his bottom lip, still holding onto Zuko’s arm and rubbing his thumb gently over his warm skin. That’s one thing he’s since learned about fire benders, they always tend to run a little hotter than most other people. “You wanna talk about it?” he asks, and glances over to see Aang blinking blearily at them.

“I… don’t know,” Zuko murmurs, and hates the way that not only is his voice shaking, but his whole body trembles weakly. He’s had his fair share of horrifying nightmares, but this one really got to him.

“What’s going on?” comes Aang’s groggy voice as he plods over and settles in the grass in front of them.

“Nightmare,” Sokka explains before settling his concerned gaze back on Zuko. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to, but… we’re here to listen.”

Zuko’s heart swells, but bile also rises in his throat. He doesn’t like having attention on him like this. Rather, he’s not used to it. It’s a little overwhelming, but both Aang and Sokka just sit silently with him. He’s hyper-aware of Sokka’s hand on his arm, and he can’t tell if it’s unwelcome or not. 

He takes in a deep breath, then another, and comes a little farther out of hiding. When it’s clear that the others aren’t going to let this drop so easily, Zuko concedes.

“It was about my father…”

Both Aang and Sokka take in similar sharp breaths, but otherwise remain silent.

“We failed. My father managed to beat us and capture all of you,” he murmurs, gripping at the cloth of his pants. Sokka watches him intently, rubbing his thumb in gentle circles against his skin. Maybe it’s because he’s just woken up and hasn’t had a chance to put up his wall, but Zuko looks so vulnerable right now. It makes a lump form in Sokka’s throat. “I saw all of you get captured… imprisoned, hurt, tortured, d-dead…” Zuko trails off.

Of course he’s afraid of what would happen to the whole world if his father managed to complete his plan, but right now, in this moment, after having spent the last couple of weeks with this gaggle of kids, he’s more worried about them landing in harm’s way. He wouldn’t ever say it out loud, at least not yet, but he was really beginning to love each and every one of them.

Sokka and Aang are still silent, but Sokka is chewing on the inside of his cheek. He’s had his own handful of nightmares about the same subject, so he relates all too much. “That’s not going to happen, you know that,” he assures, and Aang firmly nods his head.

“We won’t let it happen.”

Zuko sighs heavily and just stares. Sokka thinks to himself that Zuko looks tired. Really tired. More than just tired after waking up from a nightmare. After going through hell the last few years, and especially the last couple of months, he looks absolutely beat to shit. He wonders why he never really noticed it before.

“And… my mother was there…” Zuko continues, his eyes going out of focus. Tears form at the corner of his better eye, but neither Sokka nor Aang comment on it. “But she… she was… gone.” He can’t stop his voice from breaking.

Sokka sucks on his bottom lip, giving Zuko’s arm a pointed squeeze and hopes his message of “I’m sorry” gets through to him.

In an instant, though, the fire bender’s telltale rage is back. Embers spit from his lips when he speaks, and his arms flex under Sokka’s touch. “And he kept _taunting_ me. He kept saying ‘Look, Sukhon, you can’t do anything to save your friends, just like you couldn’t save your _mother_ ’,” he snarls, and both Aang and Sokka share a confused glance at the unknown name. Zuko doesn’t seem to notice, though, and keeps talking, too worked up to stop. “He kept telling me how useless I am, how I’ll never amount to anything, how Azula will always have me beat. That I’ll always be his helpless, powerless, _worthless_ daughter, that I—“

Sokka’s eyes go wide, and Aang makes a small “oh” sound, which is enough to draw Zuko out of his tirade and realize what he’s done. He sits bolt upright, eyes wide with fear as he clamps a hand over his mouth. The two other boys just stare at him, bewildered as the gears turn in their minds to piece it together.

“I— I didn’t— that’s not what I meant, I just— he said—,” Zuko is rambling, voice wavering higher and higher as he tries to backpedal, and the abject fear in his eyes rips right through Sokka.

In an attempt to console their friend, Sokka lets go of Zuko’s arm to hold his palms out to him. “Hey, Zuko, calm down, it’s okay, it’s okay—“

“No, it’s _not_ , just— please forget I said anything,” Zuko snaps, but any ferocity is completely lost in the way his voice thickens with his tears, in the way it shakes as he curls in on himself and tries to move away from them.

Realizing that letting go of him was a mistake, Sokka reaches out again, this time his fingers overlapping with Zuko’s as they grip at his pants till his knuckles go white. It makes Zuko flinch, but it keeps him from shifting farther away, at least. He feels hot. Extremely hot. Sokka wouldn’t be surprised if there’d be clear scorch marks when he finally let go of the fabric.

“Zuko, please, it’s okay,” Aang pipes up, holding his hands up as well and moving closer, till his bent knees touch the tips of Zuko’s toes.

Zuko looks like a fox antelope caught in torchlight, eyes wide as saucers and his body language screaming that he wants to make a run for it. His gaze flits between the two other boys, finally settling on Aang when the air bender rests his gentle fingertips on his knee. Sokka watches as Zuko finally begins to relax, like his whole body is deflating, as Aang gives him the Avatar-certified gentlest smile to grace the Earth.

“Zuko… it’s okay,” he reiterates, and Zuko just blinks. A tear finally streaks down his cheek, but he doesn’t move to wipe it away. Neither does Sokka, despite the strong urge to do so. They’ve all shed their fair share of tears this past year, and it breaks his heart every time he has to watch his friends cry. Zuko seems wary of affection, though, given the way that he keeps flinching every time one of them lays a hand on him, no matter how gentle the touch.

So, he lets Aang take it from here.

“Zuko, there’s nothing wrong with… with this,” Aang continues, voice as gentle as ever, “You are _you_. No matter what your father or anyone says, they don’t control you.”

Sokka catches the way the prince’s chin trembles, but doesn’t mention it.

It wasn’t until he met Aang, that day in the ice berg, that Sokka had ever really encountered a situation like this. There were stories of people in the Water Tribe, mostly stories he heard from Gran-gran, about little girls who grew up into young men, or little boys who grew up into beautiful women, and some who grew up into neither or both. He didn’t know anyone personally, but supposedly when there were more water benders, and thus more people in the village, they were more prevalent. It wasn’t necessarily taboo, but it certainly wasn’t common knowledge anymore. 

Aang was more in touch with his feminine side, mostly because the Air Nomads had a more fluid way of living. He spoke about spiritual figures who were both male and female, and monks who displayed themselves however they wanted. Young children, while differentiated sometimes based on their sex at a young age, were encouraged to choose whichever presentation most appealed to them. In the end, this led to many young air nomads having a mixed sense of gender. There was no “boy or girl” unless they chose to acknowledge it.

“A hundred years ago, I even knew some Fire Nation folks who were like you,” Aang adds with a warm smile, and Zuko is finally starting to calm down. He’s no longer radiating such strong heat, and he doesn’t look like he’s about to jump out of his own skin. “I don’t even really see myself completely as a guy,” Aang continues as he taps his chin, like he’s still mulling it over, but then gives them a big toothy smile, “And I’m sure she won’t mind me saying, but Toph is like you, too! Only… the other way around, I guess.”

That makes Zuko’s eyes go wide, and he glances over at the tent where the girls are sleeping. He finally seems to understand that they aren’t put off by his situation and never will be, but he’s still tense, so Sokka lets out a little huff and shifts to sit properly beside him.

The fire bender jumps a little, and Sokka ignores the way it makes his heart ache. “Is this okay?” he asks gently as he places his hand gingerly against Zuko’s back and rubs through the fabric.

Zuko glances at him, eyes flickering briefly with fear, before curtly nodding his head. His eyes still say he wants to run out of the camp, but he shifts his feet in the grass and grabs more tightly onto his pants, a sign that he’s fighting that urge.

“You know, we don’t see you any differently,” Sokka murmurs, watching the side of Zuko’s face. His scar looks purple in the blue light of the moon, and his cheeks are still damp with tear trails that he’s refused to acknowledge. Zuko just nods his head, but Sokka can feel when a knot of tension loosens in his back. “You’re still our crazy, hot-headed jerk bender, dude,” he adds with a smile, and is only slightly mortified that he decided to make a joke now, of all times.

To his surprise, Zuko lets out an amused, but exhausted, huff. 

Thankfully, Aang also plays along. “Exactly, Sifu Hotman!” he says with a quiet laugh, giving him a little half-hearted bow. Sokka’s heart somersaults when it makes Zuko smile, and hopes his fluster doesn’t show on his face.

Sokka wants so badly to lean over and wrap his arms around Zuko, to envelope him in a big, snuggly, comforting hug, but he holds himself back. He doesn’t want to overwhelm him, and it seems like the small back rub is easing his tension. Perhaps another time.

In that moment, Zuko does want to ask for a hug, but he doesn’t. This is one of the few times anyone has accepted him for who he is. First it was his mother, then it was his Uncle. He didn’t get into it deeply Mai about it till they were teenagers, but she came around to it. And now this wacky Water Tribe boy and the Avatar, whom he’d been hunting with intent to capture and kill for the last three years, are here comforting him from his nightmare, telling him he’s okay, that there’s nothing wrong with him. Perhaps another time he’ll feel comfortable enough to blatantly ask for affection from his friends.

Yes, his _friends_.

* * *

Leaving to enact their final plan, to officially defeat the Fire Lord, is one of the hardest things Sokka’s ever endured. Zuko had done a good job at hiding his pain, but he seemed more grounded, more confident, more happy, after seeing his Uncle again, and seeing Zuko unabashedly happy is a fairly rare sight. It makes it all the more difficult to part ways, no matter how brief it may be.

Sokka’s heart aches as he watches Zuko and his sister leave for the Fire Nation palace, trying to swallow his nerves. He wishes he hadn’t only given Katara a hug, and he’s only slightly distracted from the regret when Suki takes his hand to get going on their giant eel hound.

He thinks about it again when he’s laying on the airship platform, on his back, pain radiating from his broken leg, barely hanging onto Toph’s fingertips. All of his regrets jump to the front of his mind. Katara, Aang, his father, Zuko.

Zuko. Zuko. Zuko.

He thinks of the way Zuko tells his awful jokes, the way he looks like he’s going to implode when he’s nervous, the way he smiles when he means it, the way he looks when he’s sleeping, the way he’d been so terrified that night when he let his secret slip, the way he’d finally looked relieved at their comfort, the way he was finally coming around to receiving their affection.

He thinks he might be crying, but then they’re saved, and he forgets he was yearning.

* * *

When Sokka sees Zuko again, they each have their new battle scars. Katara is helping Zuko walk, and Sokka is leaning heavily into Suki. They give each other a once-over, shocked and concerned over their injuries, but the relief takes over and, with a few pained hisses and whimpers, fall into each others arms. 

Sokka would turn it into a bone crushing hug if he didn’t know Zuko’d been zapped to hell, but he takes great pleasure in the way the prince burrows into his shoulder and let’s out a shuddering, “We did it.”

* * *

The following day, they hold Zuko’s coronation. 

If he were being honest, Zuko would admit that he was terrified of it all. But seeing Aang there, ready and waiting for him, reminds him that this is what they wanted. It’s for the best, and he knows, no matter how much work it takes, he’ll get his nation back in working order and create peace alongside the Avatar. Pride swells in his chest at seeing all his friends and comrades cheering for him, bumped and bruised, but all still in one piece.

Festivities aren’t as grand as for usual coronations, but there’s food and drink and joyous commotion. He ignores the way some of the palace staff look upon him with disdain, still loyal to his father’s regime, but there is no foul play. He assumes there will be many resignations within the following days.

It isn’t long until the gang is mingling together again, off in a secluded corner of the courtyard, attempting to get away from many of the drunk adults and constant congratulations. It’s when an administrator of the palace approaches Zuko, in an attempt to speak about diplomatic matters, that Sokka speaks up. He’s a little buzzed, enjoying the spiced Fire Nation whiskey far more than any fifteen-nearly-sixteen-year-old should, but he’d probably still shoo the administrator away regardless.

“Ah, ah!” he barks, wagging a finger in the woman’s face, who levels him with a firm glare. That doesn’t deter Sokka, though. “No Fire Lord talk, only friend talk.”

Zuko smiles apologetically at the woman, who finally walks away when he gives a nod of his head. “Even if I am Fire Lord, I can be your friend at the same time,” he says, his own minimal alcohol intake making his amusement all the more prevalent.

Sokka waves a hand in his face and flops back against Suki, who carefully moves her drink out of the way so it doesn’t spill. “Well, I don’ wanna hear anymore political mumbo-jumbo till we finish partying,” he slurs, and the whole group laughs behind their hands.

Zuko suggests they find a quieter spot, one away from any prying eyes. As they exit the courtyard, the guards give the new Fire Lord a nervous glance, but he waves them off, telling them to keep watch on the celebrations, he won’t be going far.

He leads everyone through the palace, with Mai’s arm linked through his, to one of the many gardens within its walls. The setting sun casts a red glow over the pond, a few turtle ducks milling about on the surface. They swim to the opposite edge when the group approaches, but they don’t waddle off and out of sight. Aang quickly gets their attention, crouching at the edge of the pond and dipping his fingers in the water till they come closer and nibble at his hand.

Zuko settles on the grass under the big tree nearby, Mai pressed against his side. He watches as Suki wrangles Sokka into a sitting position on the grass, and smiles. 

“Nice place you got here,” Toph remarks as she wanders through the garden, before seating herself on a stone bench nearby.

“I came here a lot when I was a kid,” he says, and his mother flashes in his mind. He wishes she were here, that she could see him now. He only hopes that she’s out there somewhere, will hear the news, and be proud of him.

He feels Mai lean into him more, her cheek resting on his shoulder, but he instead finds himself staring at Sokka and the way he’s leaning into Suki and murmuring to her. She laughs softly behind her hand at something he says. Katara soon moves to sit beside them in the grass, and both girls are drawn to Aang, who holds a small turtle duckling in his cupped hands. With no one listening to him anymore, Sokka stares up at the darkening sky.

It suddenly occurs to Zuko that he really thinks Sokka is a handsome guy. The thought catches him off guard, and he flounders when Sokka brings his gaze back down and their eyes meet from across the pond.

Sokka’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles, soft and warm rather his usual sharp, toothy grin, and it sets off a spark in Zuko’s heart. 

* * *

The sun has long set, but none of them have bothered getting up yet. Aang lit the few lanterns dotting the garden, casting everyone in a soft yellow glow. Even though they all sit in a circle, they’re all having separate conversations. Mai was starting to warm up to everyone, and was now talking softly with Suki and Katara a few feet away. Aang and Toph sit at the pond’s edge, making little figures out of stone with their fingertips. Zuko is content watching them all in silence, letting relief at the war being over wash over him.

He looks up, catching a few glimmering stars through the leaves of the tree overhead.

There were so many things he needed to do, so much that needed to change. He needed to work hard to right many of the wrongs that his family had created in the last hundred years, but it pained him to think that there were many things that would never be fixed. The Air Nomads, the near extinction of the dragons, the Southern Water Tribe, and the countless villages, towns, and cities that had been raided, gutted, slaughtered. The things that could be fixed would be no easy feat, either. For one hundred years, the Fire Nation had created a world of hatred and fear, and it would be many generations before it would heal. Even then, they’d be left with a scar.

There would be a stigma around Fire Nation folk from the other nations, and vice versa. He only hopes that people would be understanding. That they wouldn’t see someone in red robes and mark them as a horrible person, as a killer. And he hoped the leftover power-hungry Fire Nation folks wouldn’t continue taking advantage of those the military had already hurt. He needed to bring the Fire Nation away from destruction and back toward peace, toward kindness and love and warmth, as it was meant to be.

He knew he’d be setting to work first thing the next day, going over laws and regulations, calling back occupying troops to return land to its rightful owners, to start undoing the propaganda that his family had instilled into the nation. Into _his_ nation.

Just as he’s organizing his schedule in his head, he feels a gentle touch to his thigh. He looks down, dragged out of his thoughts, to see Sokka leaning against the tree beside him.

“You know, you don’t need to be thinking so hard just yet,” he says with a grin, and Zuko hums.

“If I want to put the Fire Nation back on track, I need to start fixing things as soon as possible,” he murmurs, and Sokka huffs beside him. “I know, I know, no ‘political mumbo-jumbo’.”

Sokka chuckles and leans into him even more. Still not quite used to the minor act of affection, Zuko feels his cheeks flush and hopes nobody notices under the low light. In the end, though, Sokka notices the change.

“Mm, you’re warm,” he says with a pleased hum and snuggles even closer, cheek bunching up the silk robe at his shoulder. His breath still smells hot with whiskey.

“Uh-um,” Zuko chokes. “Thanks…?”

“You’re always so warm,” Sokka continues, his arms finding their way around Zuko’s waist. Zuko’s cheeks flush even darker, and part of him wants to pull away, but an increasingly loud part of him tells him to let it happen, that he wants more.

Tentatively, Zuko lets one of his hands rest on Sokka’s back, effectively pulling him closer, and Sokka hums happily. 

“Is it hugging Zuko time!?” Aang nearly shouts, making Zuko jump and putting everyone’s eyes on him.

Still buzzed, Sokka interjects before the Fire Lord can try to dissuade them. “He’s so warm, you guys!” he drawls, nuzzling even farther into Zuko’s upper chest, getting ever closer to his neck, the warmest part of his body.

Zuko feels himself starting to get anxious at the situation, but then one of Sokka’s hands finds his and links their fingers together. He really, truly hopes nobody can tell just how red his cheeks are. Strangely, though, the touch tamps down his nerves enough that he doesn’t mind when Aang, then Toph, then Mai, Suki, and Katara surround him for a group hug.

He wants to cry, but it’s not out of discomfort.

He squeezes Sokka’s hand.

That spark in his heart bursts into flame, and he doesn’t even realize it.

* * *

Zuko knew he and everyone else would be busy gathering up all the fallen pieces at the end of the war, but he couldn’t have prepared himself for just how busy they would be. Out of everyone, Zuko sees Aang the most in the following year. They work together very closely, reading and editing laws, doing away with some and creating new ones. Aang even took it upon himself to start working up a new school curriculum for the Fire Nation, since he knew first hand how much propaganda was in current lessons. 

Zuko felt like he was constantly going to meetings, talking with officials and advisors, reading and writing letters, acknowledging issues and taking steps to approach them. It took a few months to get the hang of it all, and while he still sometimes missed meals or forgot to bathe for several days, he was getting the work done.

Uncle Iroh stayed by his side in the Fire Nation for the first few months, just until he got his feet under him. While he was never actually Fire Lord, Zuko knows his Uncle would’ve been the best in the nation’s history.

Instead, Iroh reminds him again and again that he, Fire Lord Zuko, will be the greatest leader in the nation’s history.

Once Zuko felt comfortable in his position, and after the initial outcry and violence from those still loyal to the old regime had died down, Iroh left for Ba Sing Se to return to his tea shop. Even though he was feeling more confident in his capabilities as Fire Lord, Zuko kept a fresh stack of paper and ink at the ready to send a messenger hawk out to the Jasmine Dragon when he needed advice.

In the first few months, Zuko replaced over half of the higher ranking palace officials. Many of them left of their own accord, some with more harsh words than others. Some were stubborn enough to try and stay, but it was clear that they didn’t approve of the nation’s new peaceful direction and would attempt to sabotage progress. Many of those people received harsh words from Zuko instead, and immediate termination of their positions if a replacement was available. In their place came many new faces, both young and old, some not even native Fire Nation. Zuko felt it might be best that he enlist in the help of other nations, especially those displaced by his ancestors. 

He gets a visit from his other friends every couple months, but they’re becoming more scarce. 

Sokka and Katara are busy rebuilding the Southern Water Tribe with their father, and there’s often talk of Sokka being next in line for Chief. That makes Zuko nervous, but only for selfish reasons that he has yet to admit to himself.

Toph wound up in her least favorite place, Ba Sing Se, but was actively working to better it. She worked with officials to repurpose the Dai Li to be an actual protector of cultural heritage in the city, rather than a terrorist force that quelled dissidents. And while many of the city’s walls would still stand, she was actively fighting against the rigidity they created, and worked to make each ring more accessible to all peoples. Turns out, she and the other pro earth benders could get a lot of work done with their stubborn attitudes and likely more than a few threats.

Suki returned to Kyoshi Island with Ty Lee, who visited from time to time so she could romp around with Mai. It made Zuko feel guilty that he looked forward to those visits simply because it meant he could focus on work without worrying about Mai. Not that she didn’t understand he needed to work hard, but he hated how often he neglected her because of it.

It’s not until a year after his coronation that they’re all together again, in the same place at the same time. In an attempt to better gather all the information he needs, Zuko called upon representatives from each nation to travel to the Fire Nation palace for a meeting. Turns out, unsurprisingly, simply going through paperwork doesn’t give you all the information you need to fully understand a situation. Plus, he felt like he was becoming too stuffy, too distanced from the actual people he was working with and trying to help, being cooped up in the palace and trying to catch up on everything that needed to be done.

Even in just a year, all of his friends looked different.

For starters, Zuko himself had started growing out his hair. It wasn’t too long yet, but it made a nice mop on his head if he didn’t keep it pinned up. Even then, short sections framed his upper face, tickling the corners of his eyes.

Toph and Aang were finally shooting up like beanpoles since passing their thirteenth birthdays. Aang was catching up quickly to the others teens, but it seemed Toph was forever going to be on the shorter side. Regardless, she made sure everybody knew about the several inches she’d gained.

Katara was growing into herself more, finally developing a more mature face to match her mature attitude. Although, that only made her glares all the more terrifying, so Zuko made an effort to never get on her bad side anymore, not even a little.

Sokka was also gaining some more height, and it seemed like he’d be passing the Fire Lord by a few inches in the near future. Like Toph, he made sure it was known. And like Zuko, he was growing out his hair, his wolf’s tail beginning to dip down toward the base of his skull. What Zuko noticed the most about him, though, was he was filling out. At fifteen years he was powerful, but still a scrawny kid. Now, at sixteen-nearly-seventeen, he was finally gaining some real muscle mass. He was looking more like a man than a boy. It caught Zuko off-guard when they shook hands upon seeing each other again. Sokka’s grip was so much stronger, but his toothy grin was still the same.

“Hey, flame boy, it’s been a while!” he jeers, oblivious to the way the royal guards twitch at the nickname. That, or he ignores them.

“It really has,” Zuko says warmly, before leading him, Katara, and two other Water Tribe diplomats to the palace from the docks. Aang, who had been the first to arrive on Appa, greets them both warmly and intertwines his fingers with Katara’s as they approach the front courtyard.

“Hey, uh, you invited some people from Kyoshi, right?” Sokka asks, voice quiet as he steps closer to Zuko while the others wander ahead.

“I did. They should be arriving shortly. Ty Lee will be coming, as well as one of the chiefs,” Zuko says, and cuts off Sokka before he can ask the obvious question. “And yes, Suki should be coming as well, seeing as she is the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors.”

Sokka hums and stands up straight, looking ahead toward the approaching palace doors. “Okay. Okay, cool,” he says, but his voice sounds tight.

“Is… that okay?” Zuko asks, arching his brow, and Sokka just frantically nods his head.

“Yeah, yeah, totally,” he assures, before hurrying to catch up with his sister.

Zuko thinks it’s strange, but is quickly distracted by his secretary with a stack of papers asking for some quick signatures.

* * *

The meeting goes as smoothly as it could have, but definitely ran longer than anyone anticipated. Zuko wanted to hear thoughts from everyone, get down any and all information he could, and begin discussing individual concerns within each nation, as well as tossing out the beginnings of Aang’s ideas for how to handle the Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom.

By the time they wrap up, the sun is low in the sky and dinner is waiting to be eaten.

Once the food is gone and the waitstaff are thanked, something that Zuko wanted to make more commonplace inside the palace walls, nearly everyone is dragging their feet to go to their sleeping quarters for the night. 

Everyone, except the teens.

They all remain around the large, fancy dining table, which Toph has unceremoniously made into her giant personal chair. For many of them, they hadn’t seen each other in nearly half a year. It felt strange to be apart for so long, especially when so many of them lived and traveled together for that long, arduous year after Aang was discovered in the South Pole. Even so, it feels like they haven’t been apart for long at all. Their conversations come naturally again, making fun of one another and exchanging old and new stories, as if no time had passed since their last meeting as a group.

“We should really do stuff like this more often!” Ty Lee exclaims, chipper as ever, as she stands behind Mai and plays with her hair.

“I wish,” Katara says with a sad smile, “I didn’t realize how much I’d miss you all.”

Zuko hums in agreement. “I’m just glad we get to see each other at all.”

“Yeah, you’ve really been working your ass off, dude,” Sokka says from his seat next to him. “You were even talking to your secretary during dinner!”

Zuko smiles sheepishly. “Sorry about that. There’s just… a lot that needs to get done.”

“I can come by and help more often if you need me to,” Aang offers, while air bending one of his trick marbles around for Momo to try to catch.

Before Zuko can decline his offer, Mai speaks up. “Don’t even bother, he won’t let you help him. Trust me, I’ve tried,” she says, and offers the Fire Lord a sympathetic smile.

“C’mon, man, you need some more people to help you out!” Sokka scolds and gives him a thump on the shoulder.

Zuko just rolls his eyes and waves them off. “Trust me, I’m fine. Now,” he says, pushing out his chair to stand up and dissuade the conversation, “I know some of you are leaving first thing tomorrow. You should get some rest.”

Reluctantly, they all agree, and trot off to their sleeping quarters. Zuko, however, heads to his private office instead. He knows he should be following his own advice and go to bed, especially after his friends nagged him about it, but he’s been sitting on some decrees that need reading over for edits or approval. He could’ve done them earlier, but the desire to spend time with his friends was too great.

He sets to reading under the dim glow of candlelight till he feels like his eyes are going crossed and the moon is high in the sky. He’s gone through nearly two-thirds of his pile when he hears his door creak. He jumps, eyes flicking up to the doorway to see a groggy, confused Sokka peering in at him.

“Zuko?” he slurs, voice still thick with sleep, and he rubs one of his eyes with the heel of his palm, “What the hell’re you doing?”

Zuko sighs, but can’t help admiring how Sokka looks with his longer hair down. It frames his face handsomely and tickles nearly to his collarbone. 

“I could ask the same of you,” he retorts as he stands up from his desk, groaning when his back pops. He truly hadn’t realized how late it had gotten, but the urge to finish what he’d started is scarily tempting. Especially since, even though he’s been working day in and day out, very few of his new decrees have been put into action, as he’s been specifically working on removing the Fire Nation presence from other nations. He needed to fix problems in his own nation, but it felt more imperative to give the other parts of the world more room to get back onto their feet, no matter how many stubborn Fire Nation citizens complained about minimizing their footprint on the world.

“Was lookin’ for a bathroom. This place is huge and confusing,” Sokka mumbles before walking farther into the room to glance at the papers strewn about Zuko’s desk. “Don’t tell me you’ve been doing paperwork this late at night…”

Zuko just grumbles and shrugs. “If it’s any consolation, I was about to head to bed.”

“Sure you were.”

Zuko huffs without actually being mad, and shimmies off his outer robes as Sokka reaches for the next revised law he was going to read through. Zuko lets him, and flops back down into his chair in his undershirt and pants. Those robes could get real stuffy, he’s surprised he hadn’t taken them off sooner. Even more evidence he’d gotten lost in his work.

He watches Sokka’s eyes flit across the paper, drowsiness slowly leaving his features. Eventually, a crease forms between his eyebrows, and Zuko cocks his head, now curious as to which decree he was reading.

Before he can ask, Sokka murmurs, “I didn’t know your great grandfather outlawed same-sex romantic relations…”

Zuko tenses, then looks away. “Yeah…” is all he can muster up the ability to say.

“Good thing you actually give a shit about human rights.” Sokka’s eyes flit back up to the top of the paper and skim down it one more time. “This sounds good. Well written. Did you write this?” he asks as he lays the paper down on the table again.

Zuko hums in confirmation. “Had a little help from Aang, too. He had some good language to put in there. Hopefully it can go into effect soon, just need to get some signatures.”

Sokka still hasn’t moved his eyes from the page, despite setting it down. He keeps scanning it, and Zuko wonders what’s going on in that thick head of his.

“I also have one in the works for, um, what was the word Aang used again…” Zuko mutters as he flips through the stack he’d already read through for the night. That finally draws Sokka’s eyes back up to him, and Zuko lets out a quiet “ah-ha” upon finding the correct paperwork. He gives it a glance-over, then hands it to Sokka. “One for, uh, transgender people. Y’know, like… like me.”

A small smile twitches at the corner of Sokka’s mouth, and he happily takes the paper to read it over. This one is more clearly in an early phase, with lines crossed out, rewritten, and notes filling the margins, even trailing onto the back of the page. Same as before, Sokka’s eyes scan over the page, turning the paper here and there when he needs to read Zuko’s scrawling notes that trickle down the edge of the sheet. 

The Fire Nation, at least in recent history, didn’t promote anything like this. Especially in recent decades, they worked to actively hide it. They didn’t even have words to currently describe this sort of thing, but they did long in the past, and the Air Nomads had many different words and identities people could choose from. Thankfully, Aang was both an Air Nomad and lived in a world one hundred years ago that was still actively accepting of people who deviated from the modern-day norm.

“This one is good, too,” Sokka finally says after giving it a second read, before reaching for Zuko’s inkwell. “Mind if I write on it?”

“Go for it,” Zuko hums, and reaches up to undo is topknot while he listens to the idle scratching of pen on paper. Sokka mostly seems to be adding in suggestions for different words, reworking sentences to be more clear, and the like. Zuko leans back in his chair, brushing his bangs out of his eyes and tucking some strands of hair behind his ear.

After a few minutes, Sokka smiles down at his handiwork, and hands the paper over. Zuko tries to ignore the way Sokka’s eyes linger on him with his hair now down, but his heart flutters nonetheless.

“Thank you,” Zuko says, giving the new notes a quick read. Sokka’s handwriting is so much neater than his own, and he wonders if it’s because of his more artistic tendencies. The new adjustments and additions are helpful, but he sets the sheet aside for now. “I’ll run this by Aang and my other advisors tomorrow. I think my eyes are going crossed from all the reading.”

Sokka laughs. “Yeah, you’ve been up _way_ too late, Mister Fire Lord, sir.” He even has the audacity to straighten his posture and give him a proper bow.

Zuko just groans and gives his feet a little kick under the desk. “Please stop.” Sokka laughs again.

Silence falls over them as Zuko tidies up his desk, making clear notes for where he left off, and better organizing the piles for what needed reworking, scrapping, or final signatures. When he stands up, he can see Sokka still looking over those two sheets of paper, clearly thinking.

It’s after several uncharacteristically quiet minutes that Sokka speaks again.

“Are you like these people, too?” he asks, voice quiet.

Zuko hums curiously and leans over to follow Sokka’s gaze. He’s looking at the decree to overturn the same-sex relation ban.

He bites his lip. “I, um… am not really sure,” he says, and it’s the truth. It’s still terrifying to admit, after having been raised on the idea that it was wrong, already on top of his gender nonconformity. It’d given him a lot of grief, but he allowed himself to ignore it while he dated Mai, and while he was hellbent on finding the Avatar. He knew he admired boys he’d met, but he always convinced himself out of admitting what he was truly feeling. In all honesty, he’s shocked he can even admit he’s questioning it to Sokka right now in this moment.

Sokka just hums again, scratching at his chin. It’s that small motion that has Zuko noticing Sokka is starting to develop some patchy stubble. “Would it help you answer if I told you I was like these people?” Sokka mutters, but he doesn’t look up at his friend. 

Zuko’s immediate reaction is relief, though he isn’t exactly sure why (or he doesn’t want to admit why), but then he furrows his brow. “But… I thought you and Suki were together?”

“Well, I like women, too,” Sokka clarifies, but something still seems to be eating at him.

“I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere,” Zuko sighs before slotting a few books into his bookshelf.

He can hear Sokka’s cheeky grin in his voice even without looking at him. “Well, you’re right about that. I am an ass man.”

Zuko groans and rolls his eyes, letting the last book thump loudly against the wood of its shelf. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

When he turns around, Sokka is holding his hands up in defeat and chuckling under his breath. His smile falters, though, and he glances at the candle on Zuko’s desk, nearly melted to the base. Zuko motions for him to sit on the couch against the window. As soon as Sokka sits down, he starts bouncing his leg and twiddling his thumbs.

“Suki and I, well… we’re kind of… not… a _thing_ anymore,” Sokka mutters, and Zuko’s eyebrows shoot up.

“I thought things were going well for you?” he asks, thinking about how much fun they always had together, and how affectionate they’d been at his coronation a year ago. Though, he does recall how strange Sokka had been acting when asking about the representatives from Kyoshi Island earlier that day.

“They were, and… I guess we still love each other, but… it just wasn’t working out,” he continues, but doesn’t look up from the floor. His eyes trace the weaving of the carpet at his feet. “I mean, this was the first time we saw each other in, what, six months? Maybe longer? I can’t even remember, anymore.”

Zuko frowns and moves to sit down beside Sokka on the couch. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and the sadness is Sokka’s eyes tugs harshly at his heartstrings.

Sokka sniffles wetly. “We talked it over earlier today, when we were waiting on Toph and the Earth Kingdom people to show up.” His voice shakes slightly, and Zuko finds himself reaching out to place a hand on Sokka’s forearm, just something to signify he’s listening. “It was mutual, at least, but…”

“But it still hurts,” Zuko finishes, and Sokka peeks at him out of the corner of his eye and nods his head. 

“I think we had both been thinking about it for a while, but finally seeing each other again, it…” he shrugs and sniffles again, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand, “It kind of proved that… we care about each other, just… the _romance_ has faded.”

Zuko hums in understanding and squeezes his arm. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and chides himself for not being as good at comforting friends as he’d like to be.

Sokka shrugs. “It’s okay, I guess. I suspected it, after all. We both did.” It seems like there’s more to the story, but Zuko doesn’t pry. Sokka lets out a long sigh then, accentuated by one last big sniffle, and sits up straight. “But we’re still friends,” he says, and his smile, though tinged with sadness, is genuine.

It brings a smile to Zuko’s face as well, and he gives his arm one last squeeze and lets the silence linger for a moment before standing up. “Now, you said you were trying to find the bathroom?” he asks while holding out his hand to the other.

“Oh, shit, I was, wasn’t I?” he says, taking Zuko’s hand to lift him off the couch.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Zuko offers, snuffing out the candle with a wave of his fingers, before leading Sokka out the door and down the hall. For the next several days, he thinks about how Sokka never let go of his hand as they walked down the dark, winding halls of the palace.

  
  



	2. It will be alright

The next time Sokka thinks about that night, it’s been nearly two and a half years since that meeting, and almost two years since he’s set foot on the property of the Fire Nation palace. The world suddenly seemed to get a lot busier, after Zuko finally managed to wrangle all the lasting Fire Nation troops, returned almost all land back to their rightful owners, and everyone was able to begin focusing on rebuilding themselves without the threat of soldiers.

They saw each other one more time, less than a year after that night, for diplomatic reasons that meant their personal time together was few and far between. Then, other duties called, and Sokka’s heart ached with each passing day, week, month, since seeing his friends. Since seeing _Zuko_. Writing letters just didn’t cut it sometimes.

Opportunity came when the Southern Water Tribe ambassador suddenly fell horribly ill, enough so that she couldn’t work, and Sokka jumped at the chance to take her place. He was in line to become Chief of their tribe, but his father was nowhere near stepping down from duty, and Sokka wanted to be able to do _something_ other than work trade routes. Not that it wasn’t rewarding to work the ports and consult other nations for their goods, it just wasn’t what he felt was the best use of his abilities.

He also definitely wanted to see Zuko again, to feel that warmth and companionship that felt like one in a million, but he didn’t cite that as one of his reasons for taking the position.

So, with little protest from his family, Sokka made his way back to the Fire Nation palace. It was a quick change, enough time that the Fire Lord would know he was getting a new ambassador, but not _who_. As the spires come into view, Sokka swallows down his nerves and twiddles the braid in his hair. It was getting long now, and while he still keeps the shaved sides and back, the top is always kept in a loose wolf’s tail that tickles the base of his skull. From his left temple, he keeps a neat beaded braid, tucked back into his hair tie. Now as he was getting older, he was getting more and more comments about how he looked like his dad.

As they approach the docks, he wonders if he should’ve dressed in something nicer than his casual gear. Zuko’s secretary, the same one he’s had for years now, a nice woman named Fen, greets him on the shore. She’s wearing a simple dress, and Sokka wonders why he always expects the Fire Nation to be dressed to the nines.

“Welcome back, _Ambassador_ Sokka,” she says with a professional smile, but there’s a glimmer of surprise in her eye at him being assigned the position. Sokka grins. “Fire Lord Zuko is in his office. Follow me.”

Sokka can’t explain it right away, but something about the palace feels… different as he follows her down the long hallways. It doesn’t feel quite as stuffy and overbearing. At first he thinks it’s because he’s more familiar with it, but as Fen leads him through the courtyards, it clicks.

The palace staff, who once may have been called servants, don’t seem quite so tense. They pause and turn their heads to give him and Fen a polite nod, but don’t look as terrified as Sokka remembered them being. Fire Lord Ozai, and then the temporary reign of Azula, had left an air of uncertainty, never knowing what minor infraction would bring them punishment. 

He also notices that there aren’t quite so many images of the Fire Lords up on the walls. The main hall, which once held dozens of large, woven tapestries of past leaders, now displayed maps and landscapes of the nation. It’s only when they head deeper into the palace that the tapestries appear again, this time merely in a simple hallway toward the Fire Lord’s chambers. Fire Lord Ozai had many large, garish portraits made in his short reign that Sokka had even helped take off the walls once the dust had settled, but all that seemed to be left was a simple life size bust, matching the rest in the hallway. 

Beside his image, at the head of the line, is Zuko. 

Sokka finds himself pausing in front of the tapestry. Zuko’s expression is soft, gentle, a slight smile gracing his features. It’s in direct contrast with the hard, intimidating glare of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, but it certainly feels more correct. Zuko looks older in the image as well, more mature, and Sokka figures it must’ve been made in the time they had been apart. The gold threads glimmer in the low light of the hall, making the Fire Lord’s eyes sparkle.

As strange as it seems, the palace feels _modest_.

“Sir?” comes Fen’s small voice, pulling Sokka out of his reverie.

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” he murmurs, and lets his eyes linger on Zuko’s image for a moment longer before following her to a familiar door.

She gives a quiet knock, only opening when Zuko’s muffled voice grants entry.

“Sir, the new Southern Water Tribe ambassador has arrived,” she says with a small bow of her head.

“Wonderful, send them in,” comes Zuko’s raspy voice, a little deeper than it had once been, and Sokka smiles. He suddenly feels very giddy.

Fen steps aside to allow Sokka to enter the room, and he smirks when Zuko’s eyes widen. “Surprise!” he crows and waves his hands out dramatically.

Zuko’s mouth falls half open, blinking a few times in disbelief. “You… _you’re_ the new ambassador?”

“Yup!” Sokka beams and rests his hands on his hips. Zuko gives him a once over, before tentatively standing and coming around his desk.

The Fire Lord has grown a fair bit since their time apart. He’s a few inches taller (though Sokka still has at least an inch on him), and it’s clear he’s been getting some sparring practice of some kind because he still looks toned even under his casual robes. His hair is longer too, falling just to his shoulders, the top portion pinned up in the usual bun. It rather suits him.

Before Sokka can say anything, Zuko beats him to the punch. “You look great,” he says warmly, before pulling him into a short embrace, which Sokka gladly accepts by patting Zuko on the back.

“So do you! Especially the hair,” he says with a grin, and Zuko chuckles as he pulls away.

“You’re one to talk,” says the Fire Lord before teasingly tugging at a few strands of Sokka’s wolf’s tail, making him yelp. “I can’t believe you are the new ambassador.”

Sokka playfully pouts. “Aww, are you disappointed?”

Zuko just rolls his eyes and gives his shoulder a little nudge. “Oh, shut up.” He’s smiling, though. Definitely not disappointed. He gives Fen a small wave and a thank you to indicate she may leave, and motions for Sokka to sit opposite him at his desk to go over his duties.

It doesn’t take long for Sokka to understand what he has to do, and asks many clarifying questions, even taking notes on a piece of scrap paper Zuko was kind enough to offer him. He wants to make sure he does a good job, because it’s a pretty big deal to be an ambassador for his village and nation, but he also wants to make Zuko proud. 

“You seem like you have a pretty good handle on this,” Zuko hums as he leans back in his chair, “Your father’s teaching you well.”

Sokka chuckles and shrugs. “He is, I guess. But after working in trading for the last couple years, I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two.”

“That’s right,” Zuko says with a hum, “I forgot you were doing that.”

Sokka nods his head, skimming over the stack of papers Zuko had given him, then looks up with a smile. “Besides, working with you those years ago kind of helped lay the ground work. I actually missed it.”

“You missed doing _paperwork?_ ” Zuko asks with an arched brow, amused and a bit perplexed.

With a shrug, Sokka leans back in his chair. “I mean, I guess not the paperwork, but more directly helping people, you know? Besides, it’s not like I wasn’t doing paperwork when running the ports. I still had tons of maps to look over, and tons of inventory logs,” he says with a groan, “I’d way rather read over laws and decrees and what have you than having to know just how much money we lose by trying to sell our stuff to other nations.”

“Sounds riveting,” Zuko teases, and Sokka sticks his tongue out at him from around a grin.

“You seem to be a bit more organized here, too,” Sokka notes, and Zuko nods his head.

“Yeah, well, that week when you, Katara, and Aang were all here helping me, and complaining about how I should hire some more help, seemed to really stick,” he explains, and Sokka beams.

“That’s great! I’m sure it makes your life a little less stressful.”

“Yeah, a little,” the Fire Lord hums, and a comfortable silence settles over them for a moment. Sokka shuffles his papers, and that snaps Zuko to attention. He’d been staring, hard enough that Sokka could feel it even when he looked down at the sheets in his hands.

Zuko clears his throat. “Let me show you to your office.”

* * *

Things are incredibly busy right off the bat. Sokka has to get into the groove of his new position, and has to backtrack and catch up on assignments that the previous ambassador had to put on pause while they refilled the position. He gets the hang of it, though, and only pulls one all-nighter in the first week to finish reading and responding to various letters and notes.

He was pleased to see Zuko’s new-and-improved methods of work, though. He’d finally hired enough staff members to read over documents for him, and merely supplied a summary to get the gist of it. If anything felt off, he could request the original document and read it himself. Sokka still has to convince him to put down his ink from time to time so he doesn’t stay up too late, but he’s become more capable of it himself.

“By the way,” Sokka asks at the tail end of his first month as ambassador, “Maybe I just haven’t run into her, but… where’s Mai?” They’re sitting over dinner in the private dining hall. Normally Zuko would take his food in his office, but Sokka begged him to actually sit at a proper table for once.

Zuko stills with his food halfway to his mouth, then sighs and puts it back on his plate. “We, uh… we broke up about a year ago.”

Sokka’s chin nearly hits the floor. “What!?” he shouts. It echoes around the room and up into the high ceilings.

Zuko winces and shushes him. “Quiet! You’re so loud,” he hisses.

“Sorry,” Sokka hisses back, keeping his voice quiet enough so it doesn’t echo. “But… you broke up? You were the perfect moody couple!”

Zuko snorts and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, we were pretty moody, huh?” Then he falls silent, eyes trained in on his half-eaten roast duck.

“Well… what happened?” Sokka asks, finally properly lowering his voice as he leans forward to try and catch his friend’s eye.

Zuko shrugs. He seems hesitant to speak, clearly still desiring to hide his emotions, but he grits it out anyway. “It just wasn’t working out. I’m so busy that… I couldn’t spend a lot of time with her.” He sighs. “Which probably would’ve been okay, but… I was starting to feel too guilty.”

Sokka frowns. “Man, don’t feel guilty about your work. You’re the Fire Lord, you gotta do this stuff.”

“I know, and that’s the issue,” he frowns, “It was getting to the point where, even if I did have time to spend with her, I would always choose the work over my _girlfriend_.” His tone is harsh, and Sokka bites at the inside of his cheek. Zuko shuts his eyes and takes a breath. “I couldn’t stand the hurt in her eyes every time I told her I couldn’t take her out, couldn’t spend the night with her, couldn’t even stop to eat a proper _meal_ with her,” he spits while motioning to the table, to how he’s doing exactly what he said he couldn’t.

Still frowning, Sokka reaches his hand out to lay it on the table toward Zuko. “Don’t be mad at yourself, Zuko. Please.” He doesn’t know what else to say, but even just those words get Zuko to deflate, and he finally looks back up at his friend with soft, sad eyes. “You’re still her friend, right?”

Finally, a smile comes to Zuko’s face. He nods his head. “Yeah, we are. We write each other whenever we can,” he murmurs, “I know she’s happy.”

“Are you happy?” The question seems to catch Zuko off guard, because his eyes go a little wide and he cocks his head. It makes Sokka chuckle. “C’mon, don’t tell me you’re ignoring your own happiness.”

Zuko’s cheeks flush, and he looks down at his plate again. “I… I’m not, I mean… as Fire Lord there are times where I have to forgo my own happiness but… in terms of Mai, I am happy.”

Sokka hums, mostly pleased with that answer, and leans back in his chair. “Good. You never answered my question, though. Where is she?” he asks while poking at his food again, “Doesn’t she live, like, right outside the palace gate?”

“Yes, that is still her home,” Zuko says, starting to pick at his food again too, “But she’s been on a long trip to Kyoshi Island. She and Ty Lee are a couple now.”

“No shit?” Sokka barks. “I didn’t see that coming,” he admits, and is surprised when Zuko laughs and shakes his head.

“I think I saw it without even realizing it. It made perfect sense when she finally told me after Ty Lee came here to visit a few months after we ended things,” he says, and his smile is so tender that Sokka can’t look away. “They’ve always been close, and I think after everything they went through with my sister they… I dunno, _realized_.” He finishes with a shrug, falling silent when he looks up to meet Sokka’s eye and only sees fondness in his expression.

Having been caught staring, Sokka flusters and tries to hide his pink cheeks by stuffing a bread roll in his mouth. “Mm, that’s good then!” he says, half muffled by food, and lets the conversation move on.

* * *

Their dinners together become as much of a regular occurrence as they can. It’s not every night, but at least three times a week Sokka will try to convince Zuko to eat an actual meal at an actual table. Between his work, Sokka also makes a point to drop in on Zuko and see how he’s doing, to make sure he doesn’t need any help, and ask if he’s used the bathroom in the last several hours. That last question is always meant as a joke, but there were a few times where it did actually remind Zuko to relieve himself.

Occasionally, there are streaks where they don’t see each other for several days, whether it’s because Sokka is making a quick trip down to the South Pole, or Zuko gets dragged away on short trips to various locations in the Fire Nation, or simply because they both get bogged down in their respective work and find they can’t get their paths to cross. It’s usually at the three day mark that Sokka starts to get twitchy. While he’s made friends with his fellow ambassadors from the other nations, and has gotten chummy with his own personal secretary, he just craves more time with Zuko. He craves more time with all his friends, and writing letters only barely scratches that itch. It just becomes frustrating when Zuko is right there, just down a few hallways, and they can’t even find time to spend together.

It’s after a whole week of not seeing each other for more than a few seconds that they can finally goof off a little.

Sokka’s situated himself outside in one of the gardens, the one they’d all run away to on the night of Zuko’s coronation, and has a small pad of paper in his lap, alongside an inkwell and various brushes sitting in a small dish of water.

“Mind if I join you?”

The voice startles him, nearly painting a streak across his page, but he manages to save his drawing. “Zuko!” he shouts excitedly, and yanks the Fire Lord’s sleeve till he sits on the ground beside him, “Man, can you believe how busy it’s been? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever!” He can’t help himself from scooting closer to Zuko, leaning in to feel his warmth.

Zuko doesn’t pull away. “It’s only been a week, Sokka,” he laughs, but his eyes are trained in on Sokka’s paper.

“Yeah, that’s what I said, forever,” he reiterates with a grin before dipping his brush again and adding in a rough shadow to a shrub he’d outlined.

Zuko watches him curiously, then looks up at the garden in front of them, then back down. “Are you painting the garden?” he asks, and Sokka hums in confirmation, tongue sticking out slightly as he concentrates on adding a little turtle duck into his pond. The black and white image is simple, yet elegant, despite how Sokka seems to get rough and rushed with his brushstrokes at times. It always ends up looking nearly perfect. “You’re… really good.”

Sokka’s hand stills at the compliment, and he pulls it away to glance over at Zuko with a sheepish smile. “Thanks.”

“Did somebody teach you?” Zuko asks, leaning over to look at the drawing more clearly. 

“Not really, no. I just… kind of kept doing it,” he mutters. While he had been busy running the trading ports in the South Pole, there were times when things were quiet, and Sokka is never one to just sit still. Whenever there was a lull in work, or when he was on a long boat trip, he’d sit and paint what was around him. It was something to do with his hands and something to occupy his mind.

“I’m impressed. Do you have more?” Zuko asks, and Sokka stutters. He never really showed anyone his work, unless somebody came over to see what he was doing, but rarely did they ask to see more of it. Regardless, he nods his head and flips back to some of the older sheets on the pad, careful to mind the damp ink.

He hadn’t had a lot of time recently to work on any drawings, but the last several were of various parts of the palace or out in town. He has rendered images of some of the architecture, a far off landscape of the sharp mountains, and one page holds a carefully detailed image of a sleeping cat, curled up in what must have been a warm spot of sunshine on somebody’s window sill. Even farther back are various parts and interiors of boats and a few miscellaneous market goods like fruit and fish. 

“Wow,” Zuko gasps when he falls on a portrait of Aang and Katara, both in Water Tribe furs. It’s not quite as refined, clearly an older drawing, but the likeness is still impressive. “You’ve certainly improved since the last time I saw you draw,” he teases, and Sokka rolls his eyes.

“Listen, as far as I know, Iroh still has that drawing of us all hung up in the Jasmine Dragon, so it’s my biggest masterpiece,” he says with a grin, but nerves flare up in his chest when Zuko continues to flip back even more pages. Some of them are loose sheets, recent drawings tucked away at random for safe keeping, and all of them incriminating.

Well, not really, but Sokka still feels like he’s going to combust from embarrassment when Zuko gets to a few loose sheets that all consist of drawings of the Fire Lord himself.

He pauses, hands stilling over one of the pages, and Sokka really wants to crawl into a hole because, one, many of the drawings are not quite up to his personal standard, and, two:

“Did you draw these during meetings?” Zuko asks, but he doesn’t sound incredulous. In fact, he sounds rather impressed, and he flips to one of the other pages of his portraits. They’re more recent than the portrait of Aang and Katara, so they’re even more skilled and refined despite them being simple, quick sketches. His skills are more than evident.

Sokka swallows loudly and nods his head. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t paying attention in those meetings. If he wasn’t taking notes, doing _something_ kept him focused. There were just some things that he didn’t need to write down, and listening to people prattle on about things that neither pertained to nor interested him got boring. So, he’d lean back in his seat with the sketch pad in his lap and draw to his heart’s content. He got away with it without getting any strange looks because, unless anyone actually paid attention, it would look like he just took very detailed notes on every topic of conversation. 

Zuko made a lovely model, equal parts soft and sharp-edged. Every time they sat down for a discussion, Sokka became more and more thankful that Zuko decided to do away with the tradition of sitting up on his throne.

When he finally forces himself to look back up at Zuko’s face rather than where his fingers are gently leafing through page after page of his portraits, he notices that his cheeks are flushed pink. Nerves clench in his chest. “I’m sorry if it’s weird,” Sokka offers, unsure of what else to really say while his embarrassment is trying to tear him to ribbons.

To his surprise, Zuko curtly shakes his head. “No, no, it’s… it’s okay,” he murmurs, cheeks turning an even darker shade of red when he lands on a full-page portrait of himself. In the image, he’s smiling softly, eyes slightly crinkled at the corners as he looks to some unknown subject outside of the page. Since Sokka found himself so often entranced by Zuko’s tender smile, he tried to recreate it one day. He had enough sketches of the Fire Lord to create the image from memory, but because of that, it also meant it wasn’t quite perfect.

He relays this to Zuko, sans the part about being enraptured in his smile, who chuckles. He’s still a bit bashful, but his cheeks aren’t quite so pink. “If you can do this without even looking at me, I wonder how good you’d be if I actually modeled for you.”

Sokka twiddles his fingers in his lap, picking up his brush for a moment to run it through the ink again to keep it wet. “I mean… I could try, if you wanted to,” he suggests timidly. In meetings he sat still enough that it wasn’t too difficult, but Sokka would love to sit with him in one pose for an hour and see how far he could get.

To his relief, Zuko smiles. “Yes, we could try that.”

* * *

Later that month, Zuko sets aside a day for him and Sokka. No meetings, no interruptions, and no planned paperwork. Knowing himself, Zuko imagines that he’ll likely do some work anyway, but he promises Sokka there will be no big plans to interfere.

They set up in Zuko’s office, since the large windows offer a nice source of light, and it’s not as daunting and vulnerable as sitting outdoors or in one of the grand halls. When Zuko enters, Sokka is already there, a small easel holding up a stack of paper larger than his sketchpad, and what appears to be heavier than the pad. He’s cleared a space on Zuko’s desk to place his brushes, inks, and water, as well as a small cloth that’s stained with black and gray splotches.

When Sokka looks up to greet him, his eyes scan him up and down. “You wore all your fancy Fire Lord clothes, huh?” he teases.

“Yeah, I figured you’d want to do a nice portrait,” he says with a roll of his eyes before stepping over to a chair Sokka had set up for him. They shift around a little, until Sokka says the lighting is hitting him nicely, and he shifts his easel more in front of himself.

“I guess so,” Sokka says with a shrug, and cocks his head as he looks over Zuko.

Zuko stiffens, sitting up as straight as he can in his seat, looking straight ahead and not moving. It makes the other laugh.

“I appreciate how still you are, but you don’t need to look so scared,” he says, and Zuko tenses for a moment further before letting his shoulders slump and smiling sheepishly. Sokka takes a moment then to guide him to where he should look, how he should sit, but Sokka insists he should do so in a way that’s comfortable more than anything. “We’ll take a break every now and then, just so you don’t go stiff.”

“Okay,” is all Zuko says, and he shifts back till he’s leaning more into his chair. 

He’s staring over Sokka’s left shoulder, but flicks his eyes over to his friend to watch him reach for his brushes, dab one in ink, then in his small water dish, and immediately take it to the paper. He’s unapologetic about it, going rough at first, taking up the whole sheet. Zuko can’t see his results, and part of him wants to shoot Sokka a curious look, but Zuko trusts he knows what he’s doing.

Every ten minutes or so, Sokka calls for him to take a break, and Zuko pops his neck and rolls his shoulders. He’d forgotten how quickly he can get stiff just sitting still like that. In two sessions, Sokka had already gone through several sheets of his stack, and Zuko eyed each one as it drifted to the floor to dry. They were rough, just blocking out gray tones and getting in small details, but all of them unfinished. Sokka’s way of warming up, he explained, but it was clear something wasn’t sitting right with the artist.

Zuko’s suspicions are answered when Sokka gets him situated back in his proper pose.

“Can I change some things?” Sokka asks as he stands up to step closer to the Fire Lord. Zuko just arches a brow curiously. “With your hair, I mean. It’s too… neat.”

Zuko’s mouth falls open on a quiet, “Oh,” before he nods his head.

Sokka’s hands are gentle when he lifts his hairpin out of his bun and sets it on the desk. He undoes the topknot, letting the hair fall back over his head. Then, he moves behind Zuko and nimbly gives him a new hairstyle. He separates the outer layer of his hair, twisting and pulling it back and tying it into a tail. Once it’s all set, he stands in front of Zuko again and leans back so he can see his handiwork. Zuko just stares at him, silently asking what he’d done.

“I just gave you a little braided half ponytail,” Sokka explains before flopping back down in his chair, but he purses his lips and taps his chin.

“Still not right?” Zuko asks, reaching up to tuck the newly fallen front portion of his hair behind his scarred ear, and Sokka’s eyes light up.

“That’s perfect!” he nearly shouts, and Zuko half jumps out of his skin. “Keep your hair just like that.”

Before Zuko can make any sort of comment, Sokka is back to work, painting hurriedly onto his paper, but he’s more focused this time. His tongue sticks out from between his teeth, and Zuko finds it even more endearing than he had before.

This time, Sokka only starts his drawing over once. Now, having gotten a bit of a feel for Zuko’s new look, he’s more methodical. After getting what Zuko now knows is a rough, light underpainting down, his strokes come more slowly, more carefully. He’s taking more pauses, miming his strokes before performing them. 

Most of all, he’s staring more. It’s making Zuko a little embarrassed. He feels like his cheeks are hot, but he remains still. As he stares over his friend’s shoulder, he can see the way Sokka’s eyes linger on him in his peripheral. He knows it’s simply for the sake of the drawing, but he can’t ignore how it makes his heart race.

It’s about twenty minutes in that Sokka’s body language changes. He tucks his shoulders forward more and his brow begins to furrow. He’s biting at the end of his brush whenever he’s not dunking it in his water dish and taking it to the paper, only to then dab at the area with his rag, lifting up some of the ink. After the third lift, Sokka sighs and stands up to walk over to Zuko.

“Is it okay if I touch your face?” he asks, and Zuko’s eyebrows shoot up.

He flounders for a moment, then ever so eloquently says, “Uh… sure?”

Without anymore words, Sokka leans in close. With one hand, he holds lightly onto Zuko’s chin while the other gently probes at his cheek around his scar, tucking away a few loose strands of hair in the process. He thinks he sees color rising in Sokka’s cheeks, but brushes it off as a trick of the light.

The closeness and tenderness in Sokka’s fingertips makes Zuko fluster. “Wh-what’re you doing?” he asks, and cringes at how his voice wavers a little.

“I’m having trouble with getting your scar right, I wanted to get a better look at it,” Sokka mumbles, leaning back and turning Zuko’s head side to side to see how the light shifts across it. Then, he goes back to gently running the pad of his thumb across it.

“Do you see with your fingers?” He’s not really peeved by the situation, but it’s definitely making him feel _something_. 

Sokka laughs softly. “No, but it helps me understand how the light hits it. Scar tissue works differently than undamaged skin in that regard. The texture makes it look different.”

Zuko hums then, understanding a bit more. Anyone could tell you that scar tissue was different than undamaged skin, but he didn’t realize it was different enough to call major attention to it. That, or Sokka was overthinking his craft, which wouldn’t surprise Zuko in the slightest. 

“You’ve painted me enough times before, you still don’t have it figured out?”

Sokka barks out a short laugh and rolls his eyes. “In every single meeting, you have me sit to your right. I’ve never gotten a chance to really work on it!” Zuko just hums curtly, but lets Sokka keep poking and prodding.

After another few moments of this, Sokka huffs and sits back down in his seat, seeming more confident in his understanding. Silence falls over them again, only accented by the gentle strokes of brush on paper and both of them shifting occasionally in their seats.

As far as Zuko can remember, none of his friends really knew how he got his scar. Aside from Mai and Ty Lee, but they originally got the story from Azula. In the Fire Nation, very few people, relatively speaking, knew about the origin of the scar. Outside of the Fire Nation, it was practically completely unknown, aside from a few random folks who really paid attention when he and Iroh were fugitives. Ozai had made a point to keep it that way, for his own sake, since he took Zuko’s refusal to fight as a mark of shame on the family. For Zuko, that scar was a point of shame for a long time, but he’s since learned to take it in stride. He wouldn’t say he’s proud of it, but it’s not a flaw. 

When Sokka calls out their next break, Zuko chews his lip and bites the bullet. He and Sokka have gotten very close in their time working together, he might as well clue him in on a founding moment in his life. “Have I… ever told you how I got this scar?”

Sokka hums curiously, lips pursed, then shakes his head. “No, and frankly, I’ve never really thought about it,” he mutters, then grins and teases, “I assumed it was some accident that blew up in your face. Literally.”

While Zuko wishes he could laugh along with his friend, it simply makes discomfort churn heavily in his stomach. He looks down at Sokka’s shoes. He can see his friend shift nervously in his seat, but he doesn’t say anything. Zuko decides to break the silence rather than wait for Sokka to ask.

“It was my father.”

Immediately, Zuko can feel the tension in the room increase. When he looks up, Sokka’s eyes are wide with shock. As the statement hangs in the air, he watches a myriad of other emotions cross his face. Shock turns to confusion, hurt, sadness, and finally settles on anger. His eyes turn stormy and he grits his teeth. He lifts a hand and waves it in front of himself, as if trying to shoo away Zuko’s words. 

“I’m sorry, did you say… your _father_ did that to you?”

“Yeah.”

Zuko can _hear_ Sokka grind his teeth, his hackles raised and shoulders tense. He’s no longer looking at Zuko, his eyes are flitting around the floor between them, thoughts bouncing loudly around in his head, but none of them discernible. When he does make eye contact again, his gaze is fiery, and it startles Zuko a little.

“What… why?” is all Sokka asks. His voice is shaking with his barely contained rage that’s painted all too clearly on his face. Zuko takes a deep breath.

He’s thought about that experience nearly every day since it happened. For those three years he was banished, it literally was _every day_. For the first few weeks, it took up every corner of his mind at all times. It weighed heavy on him, it made decisions for him. Despite those memories resurfacing every time he sees his own reflection, replaying over and over again, it dawns on him that he’s never really talked about it out loud with another person. Every time his Uncle tried to get something out of him, he’d shut down, only getting angry and spitting fire about how he needed to focus on finding the Avatar and didn’t have time to humor Iroh. 

It’s hard telling the story of his experience. Looking back on it with a clear head makes that horrifying fear and panic and dread rise like bile in his throat. And the _pain_. Hot, searing, burning. He doesn’t remember much of what happened immediately afterward other than the smell of char and burned flesh. The first several days of recovery were a complete blur. He told his father it was cruel, because it was, but he doubts Ozai actually accepts that as fact.

Sokka is silent as he recounts his tale, but the tension is no less palpable when he finishes. 

“Looking back on it all, I’m just happy my Uncle was there to help me. He didn’t have to join me in my banishment but… even if I was angry with him at times, he really kept me on track,” he murmurs, staring down at his lap. 

Sokka is still silent. Finally, Zuko looks up at his friend. He’s sucking on his lip like he’s about to start crying, but his brow is pinched in anger and his eyes are swirling with malice. That kind of anger doesn’t suit his ocean-blue eyes, Zuko thinks.

“Zuko…” Sokka’s voice is breathless, soft, a stark contrast to the intensity of his gaze. Zuko notices now that he’s holding onto his brush so hard that his knuckles are white. He wouldn’t be surprised if he accidentally snapped it in two. “Man… what the _fuck_ …”

“I know,” Zuko mutters, slumping back more in his seat, only to be startled to attention once again when Sokka shoots up from his seat and shouts.

“What the _fuck_ , Zuko!” 

“I know, Sokka, I—,”

“Where is he? Where’s he locked up?” Sokka snaps, and suddenly Zuko sees the daunting man Sokka has grown into. 

Zuko was never really scared of Sokka, he was always the goofy kid with the boomerang. He was at least a little scared of most of the other people in their gaggle of friends. Aang was one of the most powerful benders anyone had ever seen, nearly mastering all four elements before he even turned thirteen. Zuko had many reasons to be scared of Katara, because she was a crazy good bender and wouldn’t hesitate on her threats. Toph was just unpredictable in her mastery, and he’d gotten his fair share of surprise bumps and bruises in the first few days after he’d burned her feet. It was payback enough. 

The only thing about Sokka that could be called scary was his sharp mind, and that was more impressive than anything. But now, as he stood over him, anger writhing in his eyes and his broad shoulders tense, hands closed into tight fists at his sides, it makes him a little nervous. He’d seen Sokka get angry before, but this was intense. The entire atmosphere in the room changed with his emotions.

“Sokka, please—,” Zuko says, holding his hand out to ask Sokka to sit back down.

Sokka shakes his head and nearly _growls_ , which makes Zuko’s eyes go wide. “I’m gonna _kill him_ , Zuko!” He’s baring his teeth, his words accompanied by the sharp hiss of his breath. “You were _thirteen_. A stupid kid! You didn’t deserve that, especially from your father! He’s scum. Scummier than scum!” 

He begins pacing the room, clearly trying to get some of this sudden burst of energy out of his system, but when he comes close enough, Zuko reaches out to grab his sleeve.

“Please, Sokka…” he begs, nodding his head toward Sokka’s seat, silently asking him to sit down. Zuko thinks his nerves must show on his face, because Sokka’s features soften just enough that he listens and does as he’s told. 

They sit in silence for a few more moments, Sokka running his hands down his face and bouncing his leg. He takes a few deep breaths before sitting up straight and looking Zuko in the eye again. “Sorry,” he murmurs, and Zuko hums.

“It’s okay.” He’s comforted by the fact that his friend is so angry for him. He’d never really known anyone else to be angry at the situation for him, save for maybe his Uncle. But Iroh couldn’t let that anger show, at least not in front of Zuko while he was recovering, and certainly not in front of Ozai. He couldn’t even express that anger while he traveled with Zuko. The Prince of the Fire Nation still adored his father, still wanted to prove he was worthy of his honor and his _love_. Thinking back, it makes him sick that his father had tricked him into thinking that was the truth. Had tricked him into thinking his father ever loved him for who he really was. Suddenly, he desperately misses his mother.

He can feel Sokka’s eyes on him, assessing him, but Zuko simply smiles when he meets his gaze.

Soon enough, the silence becomes less tense and more comfortable, and Sokka finishes his portrait. Later that night, once the sheet is dry and no longer prone to buckling, Sokka leans the drawing up on his nightstand and thinks about how much he wants to hold Zuko’s face again and let him lay all his scars bare before him.

* * *

“As far as I can tell, things seem to be going smoothly!”

“Thank you, Aang,” Zuko says with a genuine smile as he leafs through the stack of reports Aang had filled out. After lots of blood, sweat, and tears, they’d finally gotten through their first successful school year with the new curriculum. It was more of a transition period than anything else, as older students had to be caught up before they could start learning new, raw material. Children going into their first year of school seemed to have a good enough time with the new curriculum, though. Still rough around the edges, but it was a good start, nonetheless.

They started off slow, first implementing it into some of the homeland schools. As it garnered more traction and the students responded positively to it, they began introducing it more liberally across the homeland and in the lasting colonies. Most of the land that had been set aside for the colonies had been returned to the Earth Kingdom people they were stolen from, but a few still lingered due to the lasting population. At the very least, they were becoming more neutral hubs, not solely occupied by Fire Nation citizens. 

In regards to the curriculum, it helped that, at least for now, many of the teachers were more than eager to teach their students actual history. There were a few old folks set in their ways that Zuko was worried about, but every time Aang went to do a progress report, it appeared that they’d simply accepted it. 

What Aang didn’t put in his reports, and what Zuko didn’t pry into, was that a lot of the acceptance came from pressure and threats from those more keen on learning the true history of their nation.

Zuko knew the hard part would be implementing it into the more prestigious schools, where many high-ranking officials sent their children, and where most of the misinformation and propaganda was instilled. At the very least, Aang had gone directly to the administration of these schools to pull some of the heavier misinformation out of the curriculum, but they had yet to add anything new. This was going to be their first attempt at implementing their transitional curriculum, and Zuko would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous.

The only thing that really helped was Aang recounting his experience attending a Fire Nation school for a few days in disguise. Children were always eager to learn, always curious and looking for new information, and more often than not wouldn’t be satisfied till they got the _correct_ information. They had merely been led to believe that they were learning the whole truth, when in actuality it was cruelty masquerading as pride. As soon as they were offered the truth, offered a more rich history, they sunk their teeth into it.

“I guess I’m more worried about the parents,” Zuko mumbles as he runs his hands down his face. 

Aang laughs. It’s still bright and heavenly, as it had been when he was a child, despite how much he’s grown in the last five years. At seventeen years old, the kid was already taller than Zuko, and that made him lean too. He was thin, but not horribly so. One would think that being the Avatar, working with all four elements, he’d be more built out. Perhaps he’d look more average, some sort of mix of all the nations, but he still looks like an agile air bender more than anything.

“I think the teachers would say the same thing. They do _not_ like having to deal with angry parents.”

“Well, we’ll just have to make sure they don’t get _too_ angry,” Zuko says with a grimace. The last thing he wanted to have happen was parents coming to schools to harass teachers, or, Spirits forbid, holding their students back in an act of protest.

“There’s one more meeting with the Board of Education later today that I need to attend, just to check in on how the teachers are handling their new lesson plans,” Aang explains as he leans against Zuko’s desk. “There were still a handful of complaints at the last one, but… it seemed like the majority were at least on board with testing it out.”

Zuko sighs. “Hopefully the students will be on board with it.”

Aang smiles and pats the Fire Lord’s shoulder. “They will, I’m sure of it.”

Then, there’s a hard knock on the door, followed by a muffled, “Hey! You two jerk benders done jerk bending yet?”

It took years, but that name no longer makes annoyance flare up in Zuko. “Yes, come in, Sokka,” he says with feigned exasperation.

Sokka bursts into the room then with a bright smile and a platter of fruits. “I figured you might need some lunch,” he announces, holding the plate above his shoulder with the tips of his fingers while his other arm tucks behind his back, mimicking the pose of a waiter.

“Oh, perfect, I’m starving! Are there moon peaches!?” Aang asks excitedly as he leaps over to Sokka, light as a feather.

“Indeed there are, my friend.”

Without hesitation, Aang grabs for a few slices, humming happily when he pops one in his mouth. Sokka walks over to present the platter to Zuko, who rolls his eyes at his waiter charade, but gladly takes a few grapes anyway.

“How’s the school stuff going?” Sokka asks as he sets the platter gently down on the corner of Zuko’s desk, away from any important paperwork. 

When Zuko hums and shrugs, Aang groans. “It’s going great, Zuko, I swear. You know I’d tell you if things were really bad. Or even a little bad!”

Zuko just sighs and shrugs again. “I know, I know, I’m just… worried, is all.”

“You’re always worried,” Sokka teases lightly, biting into a crisp slice of apple.

That makes the Fire Lord huff and slump back in his chair with a heavy sigh. “It’s just… we’ve been working on this for _so long_. It’ll kill me if it doesn’t work out like I hope.”

Aang levels him with a sympathetic smile. “We both know there’s going to be obstacles, but I promise you, things will turn out okay,” he assures, “The children of your nation will be forever grateful for it, even if it’s foreign and confusing at first.” Zuko begins to look less tense.

“Yeah!” Sokka chimes in from around an orange slice, “Besides, they’re kids. The one’s who’re curious will keep pushing to learn more, and the rest will just go along with whatever they’re told just so they can get outta there as fast as possible.”

Zuko rolls his eyes, but he smiles. If all else failed, his friends would be right there with him to fight tooth and nail to better the Fire Nation.

* * *

Thankfully, it goes just about as they’d all expected. There were still several teachers who were opposed to the curriculum change, but with the prospect of losing their jobs, and with pressure from their fellow staff and students, they finally caved in. When Aang checked in after the first month, he even found that some of the early protesters had realized how wrong they were.

There were still the few grumps, but nothing that couldn’t be handled. It was at the halfway point in the year, when the general transitional groundwork was laid and the older students would begin learning about the corrected history of the Fire Nation, about the war crimes and monstrosities they had committed, that the parents started to become more vocal.

It was mostly those who sent their children to the Royal Academies, the highest ranking schools in the nation, who were complaining that suddenly their children were confronting them. Many of these students belonged to families who worked in the military or had high ranking positions in the palace. The important part to note was the past tense of such occupations. The names that kept popping up on complaints were those that had either quit or been dismissed shortly after Zuko’s coronation. 

On one of Aang’s visits, one such parent confronted him, had shouted in his face about how his son would no longer speak to him because of his participation in Ozai’s regime. “I was a General!” he’d screamed, and Aang just stared at him. Even Aang, as kindhearted as he is and willing to have discussions with opponents, knows when someone is a lost cause and is not going to listen to reason. He’d left the ex-General fuming with the advice that maybe he should look over some of his son’s lessons.

Regardless, in the last month of the school year, Aang brings in predominantly positive reports from each school. Zuko insisted on getting some other administrators to do it for him, so Aang could focus on his other tasks, but he’d turned him down. He’d spent too long writing up the curriculum, too long poring over books and conversing with other professors and teachers around the world, that he couldn’t just up and leave.

“Besides, it’s my duty to create balance. Their education was highly skewed, and it needs to be righted.”

Zuko wasn’t about to argue with the Avatar, but he keeps the offer on the table. 

When the end of the school year rolls around, Zuko is looking forward to the six weeks of silence from parents while their children are on break. Instead, he gets to deal with the commotion of last-minute planning for the summer Fire Festival. 

Over the last several years of his reign, Zuko had slowly been altering their Fire Festival. His forefathers had turned it into more of a celebration of the Fire Lord himself, but it didn’t occur to Zuko how strange that was until the first Fire Festival after his coronation. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, having everything revolve around him, so he was very quick to make changes. 

He wanted to celebrate the heritage and history of the Fire Nation more than anything. They’d brought back the old dances, the traditional ways of bending, the celebration of warmth and light and doing away with destruction and fear. He still wanted to show the greatness of their nation, but removed the pedestal they had wrongly placed themselves upon.

Even on the morning of the festival, Zuko is up to his ears in tasks, despite having brought on a whole team to run the festival. He inserted himself so regularly that the staff no longer thought it strange that the Fire Lord worked on the same level as them. Subconsciously, Zuko enjoyed that. He didn’t want to be seen as some high and mighty, all-important being that simply gazed down upon his underlings. He wanted to be in the mix, even if it gave Fen a headache and had the royal guards on edge.

At least his Uncle could help take the edge off. He’d arrived the day before to visit during the festival, and was making himself very useful during preparations. That usefulness came in the form of advice and a sturdy presence for Zuko to lean into for help, but also in the form of his famous tea-making skills.

“If you ever get bored of being Fire Lord, I’d be more than happy to hire you again,” Iroh had said that afternoon as Zuko helped him pour tea for the festival organization team. It made Zuko laugh.

As the sun begins to set, Zuko gets changed into his ceremonial clothes and is led out the front gate of the palace facing the main courtyard. As he’s escorted by the royal guards, he peeks through the curtain of his palanquin to catch a glimpse of the crowd. It’s already bustling, lots of chatter and laughter rising over the evening. The smell of meats, spices, and fried foods fills the air. Amongst the sea of red cloth, he spots a few splashes of Earth Kingdom green and Water Tribe blue, and smiles.

A few folks on the edge of the crowd turn their heads when Zuko approaches with his entourage, and they bow. He simply nods his head in return as he exits the palanquin and ascends a small platform situated in perfect view of every corner of the courtyard. Almost immediately, a hush falls over the crowd.

He thought after the first few years of speaking in front of large crowds, he’d become used to it, but it still makes him nervous. Having a few dozen pairs of eyes on him during meetings is one thing, but looking out over a sea of hundreds makes butterflies flit around restlessly in his stomach. 

Zuko spots his Uncle nearby in the crowd, partially hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, and thinks of the advice he had given him: that he’ll be the only one to notice if he stumbles over his words, and the worst that’ll happen is he’ll get a few laughs if he slips up. Iroh smiles at him and nods his head. Zuko scans over the gathering for a moment, until his eyes settle on someone else, someone right past the line of guards in front of him.

Sokka, standing with several of the other ambassadors and palace staff, is beaming up at him and giving him a goofy thumbs-up. It sends those butterflies wild again, though for a different reason.

Zuko takes a breath, in and out, then speaks.

“Citizens, guests, it is my honor to welcome you to the Summer Fire Festival,” he begins, voice carrying easily over the gathering, “Tonight, we celebrate our nation and its accomplishments.” 

While such accomplishments may have once been news of more land conquered, more wars won, more blood spilled, a world brought deeper into dark flame, Zuko speaks only of the good being done. He speaks of the strength returning to the Earth Kingdom villages, of the reestablishment of the Southern Water Tribe, of the protection of the lasting Air Temples, of the steps being taken to repopulate the dragons, the flying bison, the winged lemurs, of the help that the Fire Nation has given and received.

“And I want to thank my good friend, the Avatar, for helping me implement and complete a successful first year of our new transitional school curriculum, so our children may learn the history of our nation and the world, and how it is changing for the better.” 

A quiet minority in a far, dark corner of the courtyard grumbles angrily. If Zuko could see them, he would recognize some of them as dismissed military officials and political staff, the same who had been making their complaints loud and clear the whole year. Their sounds of dissent are drowned out by the cheers and applause from their children and the rest of the crowd. Nobody notices when two of them slink off down the roads surrounding the palace, away from the festivities.

“And lastly,” Zuko continues, waving his arms out over the crowd, “I want to thank you all for helping to bring this nation to glory. May this year be humble and kind, and enjoy the festivities!” With a flourish of his arms, the Fire Lord sends out a stream of small flames to light the surrounding lanterns. In no time, designated guards continue the flames outward, till the whole courtyard is basking in a warm, orange glow and strings of lights flicker overhead.

The audience cheers, and folks quickly begin to disperse throughout the festival grounds. Zuko catches Sokka still standing at the foot of the guards, though, his smile even brighter, if that were at all possible, and already holding a variety of kebabs in his hands.

Normally, the guards would usher Zuko back to the palace to prepare to be properly escorted through the festival for a few short minutes, if he so chooses, but he finds himself drawn to Sokka instead. As he steps down from his stage, he catches the way Sokka’s eyes twinkle excitedly at his approach.

“How was I?” Zuko asks, both teasing and genuinely asking.

“Dude, you kicked ass!” Sokka shouts, and a few of the guards still flinch at his crass words, despite getting more used to the way Zuko’s friends act around him. 

Zuko laughs. “Thank you,” he hums, then glances at the food in Sokka’s hands. Festival food is almost always good, and this was no exception. The smell reminds him just how hungry he is, after having run around the whole day in last minute preparations.

Sokka notices, and holds out one of the kebabs to his friend. “You want one? It’s komodo chicken!”

With a small thanks, Zuko gladly takes the meat and bites into it with a satisfied hum.

“Do you think you’ll be able to walk around a bit this year?” Sokka asks, and his excitement at the possibility is nearly infectious.

Zuko simply glances around at the royal guards who currently surround them. They shift nervously at the idea, and the head guard speaks up.

“Sir, we should escort you back to the palace first,” he says, and Zuko can’t help letting out a huff of laughter.

“I appreciate it, but I think I’ll be okay as I am,” he assures, despite the way the guard still twitches nervously. It’s all in the job, Zuko supposes, and he would like to make their jobs easier, but he feels safe. He doesn’t want to hide away from his citizens, he wants to mingle with them. He likes how it makes him feel grounded and connected, more-so than any paperwork or letters ever could.

Luckily for Zuko, being the Fire Lord, what he says, goes. Sokka is more than happy to join the entourage, and the four guards who remain to follow him easily part the crowd so they may wade through the sea of guests. They stop at many food vendors, all of which become somewhat overwhelmed at the presence of the Fire Lord at their humble outdoor kitchen, but he gives them a soft smile and thanks them warmly for attending the event.

Many of the vendors weave down roads that border the main courtyard, and Sokka takes him to all the ones he’d scoped out earlier in the day while they were setting up. 

“Check this out! They even brought some authentic Southern Water Tribe jewelry!” he says excitedly as he shows off various beaded necklaces, earrings, and hair-pieces that a Water Tribe vendor had brought.

“They’re beautiful,” Zuko says as he eyes the glimmering blue and silver beads.

As Sokka makes a show of holding up a set of earrings to his face, the vendor thanks Zuko profusely for allowing him to sell at the festival.

“You don’t need to thank me,” he hums, a little caught off guard by the immense gratitude, “I should be thanking you for sharing your craft with my people.” It’s the vendor’s turn to fluster, then, and it shows much more plainly than it had on Zuko’s face. He stammers a bit, smiling as he gives the Fire Lord a modest bow.

Sokka grabs his attention again, though, twirling in the low orange light of the lanterns. “Zuko, what do you think?” he asks as he flashes him a crooked grin. Framing his face are a set of matching, dangly earrings held up by his fingertips. The main feature are simple, elegant fish carved out of bone, adorned with varying shades of blue and white beads that glitter in the fire-light, similar to the beading he strings through the braid at his temple. They match his eyes, which are crinkling handsomely at the corners.

_You look beautiful._

At least, that’s what Zuko thinks right away, but he catches his tongue. 

“I think they’re lovely,” is what he settles for, and the earnest laugh he gets from Sokka makes his heart flutter.

“I think I’ll take ‘em, then!” he announces, and hands the clerk his payment despite his insisting they take it as a gift. As soon as they’re paid for, he takes out his simple stud piercings and pockets them, replacing them with the new ones. They look even more handsome actually in his ears, and the way they move with his head has Zuko captivated.

He’s so lost in his admiration that he barely registers when Sokka asks him if they should keep moving. Rather than answer, he takes Sokka’s hand in his own and begins to lead them down the winding paths of tents and tables again.

Unbeknownst to Zuko, Sokka’s cheeks flush pink and his heart hammers in his chest as the Fire Lord holds onto him tight, and feels like a lovestruck teenager again as they weave through the crowd under strings of lights.

* * *

The rest of the festival goes on without a hitch. Zuko had returned to the palace shortly after his time with Sokka, mostly for the sake of the guards who were starting to get a bit too jumpy every time someone simply wanted to give the Fire Lord their gratitude. Sokka had remained out in the crowd, mingling with some of the other ambassadors, chatting it up with various vendors, and buying way more things than he had any real use for. The two of them had eventually bumped into Iroh, who was more than happy to show off the small trinkets he’d purchased to display in the Jasmine Dragon. He had returned to the palace with Zuko, leaving Sokka to his fun.

Zuko had made one last appearance at the end of the night to announce the fireworks that signified the end of the festival, and was now in his chambers preparing for bed. His exhaustion had creeped up on him. After planning nonstop for the last several weeks on top of his usual workload, he was looking forward to being able to curl up in his sheets and sleep it off.

As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out, breathing coming up slow and even in a matter of seconds.

* * *

When he wakes, it’s still dark out. It confuses him, and he grumbles and shifts under his blankets. As he sits upright, rubbing at one of his eyes with his knuckle, he tries to puzzle out why he’d woken up when it happens again.

Off to his left, a floorboard creaks and he makes out the distinct sound of rustling fabric. Nerves flare out from his chest till he can feel it tingling in his fingertips.

There’s a flash of movement to his left, rushed and coming toward him from the shadows, but that’s when he feels a hand fisting in the back of his shirt from the right side of his bed. His eyes go wide, and he whirls around to face the culprit and hit them with a burst of flame from his fist. The attacker dodges, but is thrown off center enough that Zuko can yank himself out of their grip and land on his feet in a defensive stance off the bed. 

In the low light of the moon, he can just make out two well-built men wearing masks, leaving only their eyes visible, angry and determined. They slowly step closer to him, away from the bed, till they’re on either side of the Fire Lord, trying to surround him.

“Who are you?” Zuko shouts, anger and fear writhing under his skin. He whips his head between the two of them, a fist pointed out toward each individual, ready to strike if necessary. Neither of the intruders speak, but one takes an offensive fire bending stance, while the other draws a short blade from his pocket. It glitters in the moonlight, and Zuko’s stomach drops.

“What do you want?” he demands, but his answer comes in the form of a flurry of movements, a flash of fire, and the sound of metal cutting through air. While he may have been caught up in diplomatic duties, Zuko always made time for sparring practice. He wants to keep his reflexes sharp, his body tough and toned, and it’s paying off. He easily parts the attacking burst of flame, sidestepping the knife in the same swift motion. The man with the knife, taller than the fire bender, grunts as he stumbles forward with his momentum. 

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, kid,” he fire bender snarls, before lunging forward with a fistful of fire that barely grazes Zuko’s pajamas, instead hitting the curtains framing the windows behind him.

Zuko yells as he charges the intruder. He manages to trip the man up, flames swirling at his feet and leaving soot on the floorboards, and he lands against the wall with a heavy thud. Before Zuko can further detain him, the man with the knife grabs at his arm and spins him around, swinging the blade forward. Zuko manages to turn away from the point, but the sharp edge still grazes across his left shoulder.

He hisses at the sharp cut, the fabric of his shirt sticking to the small flow of blood, but wrenches the man away from him with a sharp knee to the stomach. The man grunts, stumbling backward till he hits the wall beside his partner with an equally loud thud.

“What do you want?” Zuko asks again, grabbing at the slice on his arm with his other hand to try and slow the bleeding. Again, they don’t respond with words and the fire bender charges him, closely followed by the man with the blade. Frustrated, Zuko growls and lets go of his arm. It’s not a terrible wound, but blood already covers his hand. The smell of hot copper quickly fills the air as it burns from his fingertips with his next defense. 

He watches as both intruders’ eyes go wide when he raises a wall of flame between him and them, and rushes it out toward his attackers. They both shout, stumbling backward again. The fire bender recovers quicker, but they each have smoldering patches littering their disguises. Zuko ignores that the room is scorched, the rug on the floor and drapes on his bed curling from the heat.

With the blade-wielding man still dazed on the floor, Zuko lurches toward the fire bender again. Flames burst between them as they meet, nearly sending them each tumbling backward, but Zuko manages to keep his footing and grips at the collar of the man’s shirt, swiping his feet out from under him. It leaves the bender’s arms flailing as he tries to keep his balance, now only being held above the ground by Zuko white-knuckling his clothes.

“Who are you!?” Zuko yells, teeth bared as he aims his fist at the perpetrator’s face. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the other man beginning to get to his feet. 

The bender draws his attention, though. “Just a couple friends of your father,” he spits, and the way his eyes squint tell Zuko he’s grinning beneath his mask.

Anger flares in his chest and Zuko growls, but as he goes to bring his fist down on the bender, a hand wraps around his wrist. His eyes go wide, and he grunts as he’s yanked off his feet. The bender hits the floor with a small gasp, but his minor distraction was enough to let the other man get to his feet and attempt to subdue the Fire Lord. Zuko yelps as his arm is twisted behind his back, and he can feel the blade pressing against his spine. 

“Like we said, don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” he grits out. Zuko is panting heavily, from the exertion of the fight and from the terror he feels deep in his gut. He’s fought and won squabbles with more than two opponents before, but these two are coming at him with precision and patience. Every time one of them gets knocked off his feet, the other is right back in Zuko’s face.

He can still hold his own, at least. He’s young, he’s powerful, he’s still devoted to his training, but the exhaustion that comes with being Fire Lord, being jumped in the dead of night after weeks of pulling long hours, has taken away his edge. That realization startles him, and he doesn’t have time to react to the fire bender landing a hard punch right in his gut. It knocks the wind out of Zuko, and he gasps and sputters as he tries to orient himself. 

“I thought this was gonna be trickier,” the bender quips, making the one with the blade laugh maliciously. It makes Zuko’s blood curdle, but just as he’s about to swing back, to attempt to push the bender away and trip up the other with a swipe of his feet, his chamber door swings open.

They all react enough to register the new light flooding into the room from the hallway, but then there’s a cloth wrapping around the benders face and yanking him down.

“Well, you were right about it being tricky,” comes a familiar voice, and the bender is dragged to the ground with a heavy thud, revealing Sokka as he crouches over the intruder with his bed shirt off. It’s the cloth that’s wrapped tight around the attackers head, and Sokka has his knee jammed into the small of his back.

That startles the man with the blade enough that Zuko can tear himself free from his grip. He whirls around and locks his elbow around the man’s throat while the other grabs for the blade. He slices his palm, but manages to get the knife to clatter to the floor.

“You okay?” Sokka asks as he stares up at Zuko. The Fire Lord’s eyes are wild, flitting around the room, between the two attackers and Sokka, whose brow furrows in concern.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine,” Zuko chokes out, and clears his throat. He hadn’t realized how much smoke had begun to fill the room as his bed, carpet, and curtains burned and smoldered. 

It isn’t long till guards finally show up, drawn by the commotion. Multiple of them rush to apprehend the intruders, while others hurry to put out the fires in the room and tend to Zuko. He’s breathing heavily, staring at the two men as their masks are removed and hands held tight behind their backs. He doesn’t recognize them.

“Sir, we must get you medical attention,” one of the guards says, eyeing up his bloody arm and the fresh cut on his left palm.

Zuko ignores him. “Who are you?” he instead asks the intruders again, but neither of them speak. They simply scowl at the Fire Lord and flinch when the guards pinch their wrists more firmly.

“Answer the question,” Sokka barks as he moves to stand beside his friend. He has his shirt draped over his shoulder, and it’s now that Zuko notices he has his machete in-hand. He twists the blade, letting it gleam in the low light of the room, and each of the attackers eye it nervously. 

When they still don’t answer, Sokka growls lowly and levels the tip of the blade to the bender’s throat. “Why are you here? Did someone send you?”

The bender’s eyes cross as he looks down at the blade, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “‘Guess you could say that,” he grumbles, and Sokka lets the end of his blade press into the underside of his chin.

“Who?” he asks, tone firm and angry. His other fist trembles at his side, clearly trying his best to remain composed. 

“Some folks aren’t too happy about their kids being taught lies,” the other man snarls, and nerves churn angrily in Zuko’s stomach.

Despite the men’s eyes being on him, he can’t find the words to respond, but thankfully Sokka is more than happy to make a retort. “Lies? You mean teaching them what their nation had actually been doing for the last hundred years?” he snaps.

“Fire Lord Sozin, Fire Lord Azulon, and Fire Lord Ozai were the greatest leaders this world had ever seen. We were going to extend that greatness to every corner of the globe,” the fire bender snaps back, and the way Sokka snarls makes even Zuko squirm nervously.

“You’re pathetic,” Sokka growls with a shake of his head, “A disgrace to the Fire Nation.” It’s clear he wants to say more, perhaps recount his own experience with loss and tragedy at the hands of the Fire Nation, but he yanks his blade back and turns away from the intruders with a curt sigh. Zuko understands why he chooses to fall silent. No matter how much they relay their history of bloodshed and terror, these people will never see it as the tragedy it truly was.

“Take them to Capital City Prison,” Zuko finally orders, but his voice isn’t as firm as he’d hoped, “Interrogate them. Find out who sent them.” And with that, the guards lead the two men out.

Zuko stares after their shadows as they recede down the hall, and only moves when Sokka places a gentle hand on his arm and leads him to the washroom to get cleaned up and bandaged.

He knows he’s not going to sleep that night, even though he’s to be placed in a temporary bedroom and have guards rotate watch shifts. Even as they stand in the washroom, guards are posted at the door, both inside and out. Zuko feels numb more than anything else. He’s exhausted, spread just thin enough that he can barely muster up the ability to speak when he’s asked questions about the incident. He can’t even bring himself to speak at length when his Uncle finally arrives, equal parts angry and scared.

While Iroh is appalled that this had happened, Zuko can’t find it in himself to be mad that these men had managed to break in and nearly assassinate him. The head guard is angry, though, and he can hear his booming voice echo through the halls as he lays into the guards who’d been on duty and somehow managed to let them in. Only later would they learn that they’d snuck in during the festival, gotten their hands on some uniforms, and remained hidden in plain sight until they knew the Fire Lord was asleep in his chambers.

“Zuko? Zuko!”

Sokka’s voice cuts through his haze, and he blinks up at his friend. Sokka smiles tenderly.

“You gotta stop clenching your fist, you keep bleeding through the bandage,” he says, and Zuko looks down. His palm is bright red, and finally the pain registers as it radiates up his arm. He winces.

“Sorry,” he murmurs and relaxes his fingers so Sokka can remove the soiled bandages and apply new ones that Iroh passes over. The wound on his shoulder has already clotted enough that it’s not oozing anymore, bit it still aches. 

Sokka sighs once he finishes with the new bandages and rinses his hands off in the water basin, leaving faint pink swirls across the surface. He leans back on his stool, resting his elbows on his knees, and watches as Zuko spaces out again.

“You okay?” he asks, and his heart pangs when Zuko looks at him with heavy, tired eyes.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It was just a few cuts, after all,” he mumbles, and Sokka sighs again.

“Well, yeah, but… that’s not what I mean. You’re way out of it.”

That makes Zuko frown, and he just shrugs. “I guess it just… startled me, is all,” he mumbles.

“It seems like more than just being startled,” Sokka mutters through pursed lips. 

Zuko’s frown deepens and he looks down at the tiled floor. Sokka’s right, but Zuko still has trouble admitting when he’s scared. He just shrugs again and keeps his eyes trained on the floor, trying to ignore the way his legs are shaking.

Sokka leans forward, enough that he can make eye contact with his friend. “It’s okay, Zuko, I was scared, too.” Zuko just blinks. “I heard all that shouting and banging… even from all the way down the hall… I thought I was going to walk in to see you… I dunno, really hurt…” His voice trails off as he bites at his bottom lip, twiddling his thumbs in his lap. His brow pinches together as he lets out a shuddering breath.

“You thought you were going to find me dead,” Zuko deadpans. 

Sokka tenses and looks away. “I mean, I know you’re a powerful bender and I know you can take care of yourself, but… I was really scared something was gonna happen to you.”

Despite the adrenaline still pulsing at the edge of his mind, warmth swells in Zuko’s chest. He reaches out with his good hand to take one of Sokka’s and squeezes. Sokka blinks up at him, and his clear blue eyes are wet.

“But I’m okay, thanks to you,” Zuko says softly, a smile tugging at his features. He knew the guards would’ve gotten to him, they would’ve been able to tear the assassins away, but with that blade shoved against his back, he thinks it might’ve been too late.

Sokka chuckles, but it’s still strained. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

Neither of them notice the way Iroh smiles fondly at the scene before him.

Freshly clean and bandaged, situated in a new bedroom with guards posted outside his door, Zuko lays in bed, awake and restless the whole night. An attempt on his life is scary enough, and he’s dealt with that before. During the first couple years of his reign there were many other assassination attempts, but none of them got past the palace doors. The guards knew things were tense, as did Zuko, so extra precautions were taken for a long time. In the last year or so, as more Fire Nation citizens began to accept and adapt to this new kind of rule, Zuko had finally convinced them to ease up. He knew to watch out for himself, and he felt more comfortable. 

Given the current situation, he felt wrongly.

Right now, he can’t stop thinking about when he was sixteen years old, a situation all too similar when Zhao sent those pirates after him. Back then, he was more angry. In the moment, catching sight of that bird on his ship, he’d felt pure terror. He really thought he was going to die till his Uncle found him. This was that same fear, only this time it felt more personal. Having his ship rigged to explode is terrifying on its own, but being able to see the eyes of his attackers, to hear their voices and have their hands on him…

It makes him want to throw up.

He was angry this time, sure, but he was too tired to let it take over like it had when he was a kid. His fear settles like a rock in his gut, and he lies against the pillows and traces the weaving of the tapestries above his bed with his eyes so he can ignore the way he wants to burst into tears.

* * *

The following day, it’s more than obvious that Zuko hadn’t gotten any sleep. He has dark circles under his eyes, and he takes a while to respond when someone speaks to him. Iroh can tell almost immediately, but he doesn’t scold his nephew. Instead, they hide themselves away in Zuko’s temporary chambers for an hour, and Iroh lets him cry. 

Sokka doesn’t bring up the fact that he’d heard this quiet moment. He’d wanted to check in on them, even brought them some tea, but he’d frozen in his tracks outside the door as he listened to the choked sobs and garbled words of Zuko relaying just how terrified he’d been. It completely broke his heart. He’s only seen his friend cry a handful of times, but it certainly wasn’t to this degree.

He leaves the tea with the guards standing in the hall, and lets them do with it as they wish.

  
  



	3. Just stay right there

His Uncle leaves five days after the incident, only after Zuko had finally managed to get a full nights sleep. He was only able to do so because his Uncle stayed in the room with him, sleeping on the opposite side of the bed. Zuko may have felt childish about that, like a little kid running to their parent’s room when they had a nightmare, but he didn’t care. He needed that comfort and protection, and Iroh was more than happy to indulge him.

The day after his Uncle leaves, Zuko makes a visit to Azula. 

For the first couple years of his reign, Zuko had kept Azula in Capital City Prison, where their father still remains. He started visiting her every few weeks while she was there, talking to her about his transition into power, about what he was doing and planning to do, about his hope for the future with the Avatar. Mostly, he wanted to see how she was doing. 

She never spoke to him.

As Zuko settled more into his role, he began to visit her more. He usually allotted a day once a week to spend some time with her, maybe bring her a special meal or food item, or sometimes harmless knick-knacks. He always noticed those were gone upon his next visit. 

Still, she never spoke to him.

At first, he wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to visit her. His Uncle hadn’t told him to, though they had spoken about Azula on multiple occasions. The only thing he could initially pin down as a reason was how broken she’d looked at the final Agni Kai. Soaked through to the bone, chained to the ground, screaming and sobbing. She was angry, frustrated, in pain.

Zuko still got frustrated with her when she wouldn’t speak to him, he had hot flashes of anger when he was reminded of a lie she’d told him, of the hell she’d helped put him through time and time again, how she’d never stepped up to help him in any meaningful way.

But he’d still visit her. He began to pay more attention to her body language. How she’d tense when he brought up their father, how she’d look away when he mentioned their mother. How she’d scoff and roll her eyes when he spoke about dear memories with his friends, and how she perked up, but remained silent, whenever he mentioned Mai and Ty Lee.

Zuko still thinks that she doesn’t fully trust her old friends, after the way they’d shocked her with their betrayals. Her reactions to their names, however, told him she missed them dearly. Her posture would relax, and she’d stare at the stone floor between her feet, remaining painfully neutral, but Zuko figured that was better than anger.

On her sixteenth birthday, Zuko had brought her a small cake with a candle in the top. He’d sung their traditional birthday song, gently pushed the platter through the gap in the bars, and watched.

Azula had yet to turn to face him on any of his visits, and wouldn’t ever reach for the items he’d brought her in the past. This time, however, she surprised him. She turned her head to look at the cake, eyed it, then actually looked up to Zuko’s face.

He tried to give her a smile, but he was so surprised at how she’d actually acknowledged him, and so aware of how tired her eyes looked, that he barely managed it. She still looked just as broken as she had on the day of the final Agni Kai, only more exhausted.

It broke Zuko’s heart as he watched her take the cake, lifted a small bite to her mouth, and her eyes went wide. She hummed around the mouthful of sugary treat, and her shoulders slumped. She took another bite, and Zuko finally, truly saw the child she was. His little sister. A child whose hands were forced by their father.

It was after that visit that he started to work toward getting her out of prison and giving her the actual care she needed, so she could grow into the person she was meant to be. He wanted to give her a second chance.

It wasn’t until she was nearly seventeen that he got her into a therapy program at a rehabilitation facility on the homeland. She didn’t seem excited about it when the guards led her out of the prison tower, but Zuko caught the way she craned her face up toward the sun and her eyes fell shut. He thought maybe he’d never seen his sister genuinely smile till that moment, even if it was small.

Zuko still visited her once a week, sometimes more if his schedule permitted. The first few times, she still wouldn’t speak to him, but she would look at him. She also wasn’t bristling with as much animosity as she once had, and Zuko managed to keep his frustration at bay. She still seemed put off by the whole situation, thinking it ridiculous and unnecessary.

“Why did you even bring me here? Wouldn’t you rather leave me to rot in that cell like dad?” It was the first thing Azula had said to him in years.

Once Zuko recovered from the shock of hearing his sister’s voice again, once the sourness at her sharp words left the back of his throat, once he soaked in how her voice had gotten deeper, he cleared his throat.

“I want to help you.”

Azula scoffed. “Help me?” she spat back at him, brow raised.

“Yes,” he said, and kept himself firm on the matter. No games, no tricks, no pulling out the rug from under her. This wasn’t going to turn into an act of revenge.

Her crooked grin faltered, a rare moment of surprise flashing in her eyes.

Zuko offered her a tender smile. “I want to help you, Azula. You deserve a second chance.”

After that visit, she opened up to him more. She still jabbed at him, and he still snapped back at her, and she pushed his buttons further by asking if he was going to tattle to mom. She stopped when one instance of such squabbling had Zuko walking away from her with tears in his eyes. It was the anniversary of his banishment.

Azula told him about how she’d seen their mother in the mirror on that final day of the war. As children, Zuko only saw Azula as a nuisance. As a teenager, he saw her as a threat, unfazed by their mother’s disappearance. He listened to her talk about their mother, how she’d unknowingly put up this wall between them while attempting to please their father, and only now does she truly grieve.

It’s the second time he’d seen Azula cry. He’d reached out to touch her, to place a hand on her shoulder, and she’d just fallen into him. It surprised him, and it took a few moments to process that she had her arms wrapped tight around his middle and she was hiccuping into his shoulder, but her held her in return.

He found it incredibly difficult to leave the facility that day, and it didn’t help when one of the nurses pulled him aside to talk about the specifics of Azula’s treatment and her progress. She was a difficult case and could be testy at times, but it was nothing the nurses couldn’t handle, they assured when Zuko asked if they needed more assistance. 

“If anything, you should just visit her more,” they’d said with a laugh, “She’s always the happiest after your time spent together.” That night, Zuko cried into his pillow as the words rolled over in his head again and again.

He’d cried ever harder when her tone didn’t sound quite so venomous as she said his true name and called him her _brother_. His mother and Uncle were the only two members of their family to accept him for who he was. His father had opposed it, tried to force Zuko to behave and present himself as Ozai wanted him to. Only when he realized that Zuko wasn’t going to go down so easily that he’d conceded, and called Zuko his son to the world, merely because it was easier than being embarrassed by the inevitable protesting from his child. 

Behind closed doors, Ozai had beaten him down further, always referring to him by his given name and defining him as a daughter, despite Zuko’s tears and complaints. Even his mother couldn’t convince the Fire Lord otherwise when they were in private. As such, Azula followed their father’s suit. Every time the words _brother_ or _prince_ passed her lips, every time she called him Zuko, it was like a dagger in his stomach.

The words came naturally now, not laced with hate and malice like they had when they were children. For a while, if they were alone in the facility, she would slip up, but she began to correct herself. Zuko felt no greater joy than when she’d called him her big brother and it had been sincere.

Azula has been at the facility for over three years now. She was no longer a young, broken girl. She was a woman, growing strong and steady every day. She’s still damaged, has scars and bruises that will never really go away, but she was improving greatly.

As soon as he steps foot into the building, she’s in front of him.

“Zuko, I heard. Are you alright?” she asks, and Zuko hopes someday he’ll always believe it when she’s genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine,” he says, giving her a weak smile.

She just frowns and rolls her eyes at him, hands on her hips. “We both know that’s a lie,” she says as they walk together to their usual table in the main room. “You look terrible.”

Now Zuko frowns, grumbling under his breath. “Thanks for pointing it out.”

“You’re welcome,” she says with a small, teasing grin, but it quickly turns to a frown once again. “Have they been taken care of?” Zuko hums questioningly, and Azula rolls her eyes. “The intruders, have they been taken care of?”

“Oh, yeah, um,” Zuko stammers. He kept trying to convince himself that he was fine, he was getting over it, but clearly is mind was still foggy. “Yes, they’re in prison.”

“Did they tell you who sent them?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

Zuko sighs. “No, they haven’t come clean yet,” he mumbles, and drags a hand down his face. They’d been interrogated day in and day out since they were apprehended, but neither of them were spilling who hired them. It was clear they agreed with the sentiments of whoever sent them, but they’d let slip that they’d been paid for it. Too bad they wouldn’t get to revel in all of their supposed gold.

Azula sighs heavily, grabbing his wandering attention again. She has another grin on her face. “Why don’t you send me in there to interrogate them? I’m sure I could get them to talk.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Zuko says with a soft laugh and leans back in his chair. 

One of the nurses comes by and pours them each some tea. Azula thanks her before Zuko can, so he just nods his head graciously. It makes Zuko’s chest feel warm that Azula was finally treating others, especially those more traditionally “beneath” her, with more kindness and decency, even without being prompted. The nurses had reported she was improving, only with occasional outbursts, which she was learning to catch and put a lid on more regularly. Zuko smiles into his cup as he drinks his tea.

As he lowers the cup from his mouth, he stares down into the warm, swirling water, watching a small fragment of leaf float to the bottom. It makes his heart ache for his Uncle, and he takes in a shuddering breath at the fact that he’s no longer here to protect him. Of course he had his guards whose duty it was to protect him, and he had friends who would lay down their lives for him, but it wasn’t quite the same. Still, Sokka’s bright smile flashes in his mind.

After some silence, Azula clears her throat, grabbing his attention once more.

“I could help protect you,” she says, and Zuko just blinks at her. She chuckles and leans forward on the table, resting her elbows upon its surface. Her eyes look sad, he realizes, with her brow drawn together. “I know I probably can’t leave this place yet, but… I want to help you, Zuko.”

Zuko’s heart pangs, and it must show on his face, too tired to hide his reaction, because Azula smiles softly at him. This time he believes her concern. It’s not an act, it’s not laced with venom and betrayal. Exhausted, stressed, and on edge, Zuko nearly bursts into tears right in that moment.

Perhaps it was about time she moved back into the palace.

* * *

It takes a little finagling to get Azula permission to come back to the palace, especially on such short notice. The nurses initially requested they have a few days to get the paperwork in order, but the idea of waiting makes nerves churn angrily in Zuko’s stomach. With a firm stance from the Fire Lord, and a sharp glare from Azula when they still try to protest it, they rush it through and grant her permission to leave. She would still be returning once a week for regular sessions with a therapist, but at least she would be returning home.

As soon as they get to the gates of the palace wall, Azula perks up. She hadn’t been back in nearly six years. A few things had been shifted around in that time, so Zuko made a mental note to show her around so she could get her bearings back. 

Once they approach the palace doors, however, she stops in her tracks. Zuko turns to look back at her where she stands at the top of the stairs, and she looks nervous. It shocks Zuko a little bit, but he understands, so he moves to stand beside her.

“Come on,” he says softly, holding out his hand to her. She pauses, then grabs it and squeezes. He tentatively leads her forward through the tall doors. “I’ll take you to your room,” he offers as they meander through the halls. A few of the older members of the palace staff, those who may have been employed when Ozai was still in charge, tense nervously at the sight of Azula once it dawns on them who she is. They still give a polite bow of their heads along with the others, however, as the Fire Lord passes. Zuko can see Azula’s gaze flick between them they pass, but she keeps her lips pressed into a firm line. 

“You removed all of father’s portraits,” she notes as they pass through the main halls where the tapestries had once hung. 

Zuko hums and nods his head. “I did.”

Azula stands up a little straighter then, taking in a deep breath. “Good.”

When they finally arrive to the center chambers of the palace, where Zuko and many of the high ranking officials who live on the palace grounds reside, he turns down the hall to a familiar door. Again, Azula hesitates, but Zuko gingerly guides her inside. It was her old bedroom, left almost exactly as it had been when she left. It was clean, and new bedding was folded neatly on the bare mattress.

Azula just stares around the room for a moment, finally letting go of Zuko’s hand to step in closer, to touch some of the items on her vanity. She runs her finger across the surface, but it comes away clean. She turns to face Zuko, brow furrowed.

“The room has been kept clean since you were gone,” he explains, folding his hands behind his back, “I hope you don’t mind, we wanted to keep the room neat, so some things might be in the wrong place.”

Azula bites her bottom lip and nods her head, turning back to her vanity to open the drawers and look at some of her old jewelry, her old makeup that she’d have to throw away, the comb and scissors she’d ruined her hair with. She then goes to her old dresser drawers, pulling each one out to look over her old clothes. She hadn’t grown a lot since she was fourteen, but she’d certainly need to find a new tailor if she wanted to replicate any of her childhood outfits.

As she wanders around the room, finding old objects and clothes and mementos, Zuko watches. She doesn’t seem overwhelmed, it’s like she’s simply trying to remember. She’s recalling all these old belongings, reliving their memories, trying to get her feet under her again.

It’s several minutes of silence before she sits down on the bed, bouncing slightly as she does so. “You’re sleeping in father’s old bedroom?” she asks softly as she touches the silk sheets beside her.

Zuko hums affirmatively. “In the Fire Lord’s chambers, yes,” he says, then sighs and shrugs, “Well, normally, yes. There’s still some renovations being done since, um, since the… incident.”

Azula just glances up at him, the smallest smile tugging at her lips, before it falls away and she glances back down at the sheets.

“We can move you to a different room, if you’d like,” he offers, worried that maybe this space might bring about bad memories, but she shakes her head.

“No, no, it’s alright, just…” she pauses, and sighs, “Just need to get my bearings back.”

While some of the maids see to making up Azula’s bedroom, setting the new sheets, organizing her few new belongings in her drawers while her childhood clothes get moved to accommodate, Zuko takes her for a tour of the palace. Most things had remained the same, at least in terms of where they were located, but Azula was surprised at every turn with how the scenery had changed. Zuko was pleased at how kindly she treated the palace staff now, though many of the longer lasting members erred on the side of caution and didn’t stick around to chat. Zuko can’t tell if it bothers his sister or not, but she doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t think I ever realized how cramped this room was,” Azula remarks as they stand in Zuko’s private office. It certainly had accumulated a lot of stuff since the start of Zuko’s reign, mostly due to his insistence of being extremely hands-on. He had brought in several new bookshelves during his time as Fire Lord, and even now they were beginning to overflow. Stacks of paper line his desk and his additional table against the back wall. She raises her brow at him when she sees all the notes scattered across his desk, dotted with ink spots, and an empty inkwell tipped on its side.

Zuko chuckles sheepishly. “It’s an organized chaos.”

She doesn’t seem convinced and rolls her eyes, but she pauses as she stands behind his desk and looks over his things. She’s stopped on a small group portrait, propped up in a modest frame beside his writing supplies. Carefully, she lifts it to get a closer look, and Zuko can’t quite make out the look on her face.

“This is everyone?” she asks softly, and Zuko hums. He doesn’t need to see the image to know she’s talking about all of his friends. 

A short while after his coronation, on one of the few instances where everyone was together, he’d requested they sit for a portrait together. It was himself, Aang, Sokka, Katara, Toph, and Suki, those who had been together on that final day of the war. They were his family, and he felt it fitting to have them with him while he worked.

She hums softly, her eyes flitting between each face. “They look… nice,” she mutters, and Zuko desperately hopes they’ll all give his sister a second chance.

As if on cue, a boisterous voice echoes into the room from the hall.

“Zuko! Fen told me you got back, how’s everything…?” Sokka begins, but quickly trails off as he enters the room and sees who’s standing there with the Fire Lord.

“Sokka,” Zuko says, and turns away from Azula to give his friend a look that he hopes reads as “please don’t freak out.”

Sokka swallows loudly, looking between the two siblings. Behind Zuko, Azula gently places the picture back on the desk with a soft thunk. After the seemingly initial shock wares off, Sokka puts on a polite, if not strained, smile.

“Uh, hey, Azula. How’s, uh… how’s it going?” he asks.

“Fine,” she responds curtly, but it’s clear to Zuko she’s more anxious than anything. She’s never been the sociable type, and she was the better of the two of them, which really said something about Zuko’s own sociability. As for Sokka, well… he was a sociable person, but could also get awkward at the tip of a hat.

What do you get when you throw three semi-socially-awkward young adults in a room together? _This, apparently_ , Zuko thinks with a small huff, which seems to snap the other two out of their silent awkward standoff.

“I’ll, um, be in my office,” Sokka states with a nod of his head before ducking out like his life depends on it. Behind Zuko, Azula lets out a long breath, like she’d been holding it in the whole time, and Zuko laughs silently at the absurdity of it all.

* * *

“I can’t believe you brought your sister back here!” Sokka says as soon as they’re alone in his office. Zuko had shown Azula around a bit more before allowing her to retire to her chambers, perhaps take a bath and relax for the rest of the day, settling into her new — rather, her old — home.

“You think I made a bad choice?” Zuko asks accusingly as he looks around the small room Sokka’s made for his own workspace.

Sokka sighs heavily as he slams one of his drawers shut, rattling his inkwell and pen as he does. “No, I don’t think you made a bad choice,” he grumbles, “Just maybe… a rash one.”

Zuko huffs and rolls his eyes before going to stand by the window and look over the rooftops. “It’s been six years, Sokka. I’ve been visiting her every week for the last three. I know she can be trusted,” he snaps.

“And I trust you,” Sokka says as he looks at his friend’s backlit silhouette. Zuko doesn’t say anything more, but he’s clearly tense. With a soft sigh, Sokka stands up and walks over to him. When he places a sudden hand on the Fire Lord’s shoulder, he flinches, but easily relaxes under his touch. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out that way, I just… it surprised me,” he says with a shrug.

Zuko hums and glances at him out of the corner of his eye, before looking back out the window. “Yeah, I know,” he murmurs, “Surprised me, too, honestly. I guess I just… felt like I needed her here.”

Sokka hums in understanding. Well, not really in the sense of it being Azula, but in the sense of them being siblings. He and Katara didn’t always get along, but he’d be totally lost if it weren’t for his little sister. The first time Zuko told him he was visiting Azula every week, it had surprised him. Azula had been terrible to them all, but especially Zuko. 

Zuko often didn’t go into detail on his experiences with his sister. He was a private guy, but Sokka knew enough to understand that Azula had made a big habit out of manipulating and tricking her brother. Sokka certainly wouldn’t forget that for a long time, and he wouldn’t forget how she’d hunted down their group for months, and how she’d quite literally killed Aang. To this day Sokka has nightmares about that.

All in all, he may not be the most comfortable with it, but Zuko seems more at ease knowing someone is there to help protect him, whatever form that may come in. And even though Sokka hasn’t seen Azula fire bend in the last six years, he’s sure she’s still just as skilled and just as terrifying. Who could be a better bodyguard than the woman who’d taken control of Ba Sing Se when she was just fourteen years old?

“Well, I promise I’ll try not to fight with her,” Sokka teases as he gives Zuko’s shoulder a squeeze.

Zuko laughs softly, finally turning to give his friend a proper smile. As always, the sight takes Sokka’s breath away, and he admires how handsome the Fire Lord looks in the deep yellow glow of the setting sun. He also doesn’t look as scared as he was the day before. Zuko’s eyes flicker curiously at Sokka’s stunned silence, who then looks away quickly before he can no longer fight the urge to kiss his friend.

* * *

The following day, Zuko sets Azula up with his secretary, Fen, to get herself acquainted with how palace work proceeds. He eventually wanted to get her in an advisory position, but she needed to make up a lot of ground before he could feasibly do so. For now, his sister seemed content looking through paperwork and reading up on all the changes Zuko had made since he began his rule. She felt extremely proud, but wouldn’t say that quite yet.

And even though Azula was now there with them, sleeping just a few halls down from Zuko, he immediately has trouble sleeping again. Even with guards still posted throughout the palace and keeping an even sharper watch than normal, he simply lays in bed and stares at the ceiling for most of the night. He can get a few hours in, but every little noise has him sitting bolt upright in bed and on edge for at least an hour before he can fall asleep again. On the third night, he begins bringing paperwork and reading material into his bedroom so he can work without raising suspicion.

Sokka notices, though. It becomes very obvious very quickly that the Fire Lord still isn’t sleeping well. He shows up to meetings drained, nodding off, bags under his eyes, and Sokka’s walked in on him with his head on his desk more than a few times in the last week. He’s also getting jumpier by the day, with the lack of sleep compounding on his prolonged paranoia. Even Azula tries to convince Zuko to go take a nap, but he refuses. At least one thing Sokka and Azula can bond over is their attempts to get the Fire Lord to take care of himself.

Sokka has finally had enough when he makes a visit to Zuko’s office, simply bringing him some food for a makeshift late-night dinner from the kitchen staff. He knocks lightly with the toe of his shoe before making his way in, only to see Zuko scrambling out of his seat and getting into a defensive fire bending stance. It both startles Sokka and breaks his heart.

He fumbles and nearly drops the tray of food in his short panic to get out of the way. “Dude, hey, it’s me!” he squeaks, and Zuko’s eyes go wide as he registers what’s happened.

“I— oh, I’m so sorry,” he says quickly before hurrying over to offer another hand on the tray of food. “I— I am so sorry.” His voice is strained and it looks like he’s about to pass out, so Sokka quickly moves to set the tray down and lead Zuko back to his seat.

“Man, you gotta chill out,” Sokka huffs as he gently rests his hand atop Zuko’s knuckles.

Zuko just chuckles breathlessly and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You have no idea how much I’d love to fucking calm down, Sokka,” he hisses through gritted teeth. 

Sokka winces. “Sorry, I know, just… you need to get some sleep,” he insists, patting at the back of Zuko’s hand gently. 

The Fire Lord sighs again, his eyes squeezed shut tight and his fingers still against his face. “I know,” he murmurs, and it sounds like he’s about to start crying.

Sokka’s heart sinks, and he shifts Zuko’s hand around so he can intertwine their fingers. His palm is hot, but it begins to subside as time passes. He smiles when Zuko gives a gentle squeeze. Sokka knows he needs time, and it’ll be a while before he really recovers from this, even when he knows he’s safe. He just wishes he could be of more help.

“Do you want to eat something?” is all he can offer right now. Finally, Zuko lowers his hand and glances at the platter of food — rice, komodo chicken, and grilled tomatoes. As if to answer for him, his stomach growls loudly as the smell fills the room, and Sokka laughs. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Sokka’s thankful that Zuko’s appetite hasn’t diminished at least, and he downs his food with gusto once he has his first bite. It would kill Sokka if he wasn’t sleeping and wasn’t eating. At the very least, he can check in and make sure his friend his taking care of one of those necessities.

He has to sleep sometime, though, and Sokka hatches a plan as he sets aside the empty platter. Before Zuko can get back to work, Sokka stands up and holds a hand out to him.

Zuko eyes him curiously. “What?”

“Come on,” is all Sokka says, wiggling his fingers as he does so.

“Why?” Zuko huffs.

“You’re going to bed. Now,” Sokka states firmly, and Zuko’s eyebrows shoot up.

He scoffs. “What are you, my mother?” Sokka rolls his eyes and simply grabs for the Fire Lord’s hand so he has to step away from his work.

“If that’ll get you to listen, then yes,” he says before dragging him out and down the hall by his wrist. Surprisingly, Zuko doesn’t protest as much as he’d thought. He doesn’t even try to yank his hand back, and simply stumbles along behind him to his bedroom. At least that was one good thing about Zuko being so tired, he was fairly easy to manhandle.

Once they arrive in his chambers, now finally refurbished since the assassination attempt, Sokka remains short and firm in his statements. He crosses his arms tight over his chest as he tells Zuko to get undressed and ready for bed.

“Jeez, you really are my mother,” Zuko grumbles, even while doing as he’s told. He unceremoniously tosses his robes over a chair, and Sokka looks away as he strips down and gets into his sleeping attire. He realizes then that he didn’t get changed himself, but his plan was going smoothly so far otherwise. He’d just have to deal with stiff clothes.

“Are you decent?” Sokka asks, and he can practically hear Zuko rolling his eyes. He turns to face Zuko again, looking him up and down to assess whether he did get properly changed, and nods his head approvingly when he sees he has. “Now, get in bed.”.

Again, Zuko’s eyebrows shoot up at how his words come out as an order. “Excuse me?”

“Get. In. Bed.” Sokka emphasizes each word by taking a step closer to Zuko, till their toes are nearly touching and Zuko is leaning back awkwardly.

Now that he’s up close and personal, Sokka can see the gears in Zuko’s head turn slowly and finally slot into place. He blinks in disbelief, but, once again, does as he’s told. He tugs the blankets back and sits on his sheets, then waves his arms out to show off his good work. Sokka nods his head approvingly.

“Now,” he says with a sigh before situating himself on the ottoman at the foot of the bed, “Go to sleep.”

Zuko just stares at him, jaw slack. “Uh… what’re you doing?”

Sokka purses his lips and hums innocently, as if he has no idea what’s so odd about this situation. “You need to sleep, so I’m going to stay in here with you,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, because it is.

Zuko’s slow processing nearly makes Sokka laugh, but he bites his tongue as the Fire Lord looks at him quizzically. “Wh… Sokka… you don’t need to be my… my bodyguard,” he stammers,

Sokka arches a brow at him, cocking his head to the side. “Zuko, you have, like, a hundred bodyguards and even they couldn’t keep out the assholes who tried to kill you.” Zuko tenses at the statement, and glances away from his friend, down to the floor off the side of the bed. It makes Sokka’s heart clench, and he turns to better face his friend. “Listen, I know you only slept well when Iroh stayed in your room with you. Let me do this for you,” he insists, and he feels like his heart might break when Zuko looks back up at him.

His brow is furrowed, a soft frown tugging down his features. In the low light of the room, he looks especially pale, making the dark circles under his eyes all the more pronounced. Most of all, his chin is trembling with barely-held-back tears. Sokka sighs and leans forward, placing a hand on the blankets at the foot of the bed.

“Do you remember that night? The night we were all camped out on that grassy hillside, before we left to face Ozai? And you had that nightmare?” Sokka asks gently, watching Zuko’s face closely. His eyes shift, a moment of recollection, and he nods his head. “It’s like that,” Sokka explains with the tenderest smile he can muster, “I’ll stay here with you as long as you need me to.”

Again, Zuko’s chin begins to tremble, and he takes in a shuddering breath. He looks down at his lap, clearly trying to hide his face, but he nods his head. Sokka wants so badly to climb up the mattress and hold his friend close, to hug him tight and never let go, but Zuko is shifting down under his blankets before he can even think to act on his desire.

Sokka turns around to sit more comfortably on his ottoman and leans back against the bed. He thinks about how he should’ve thought this through a bit more so he at least had something to do while he sat here. He didn’t even give Zuko a chance to grab for some of his papers in his poor attempt to hide the fact that he was working through the night every day for the last week.

Behind him, Zuko finally settles comfortably under his sheets. There’s a pause, then a voice so quiet it may as well have come from a child.

“Goodnight, Sokka.”

* * *

The bed feels so warm, so comfortable, far more comfortable than Zuko remembered. He slowly wakes and curls farther into his blankets, the sun hitting the back of his head pleasantly. As he opens his eyes and perks up his ears, he hears the faint rustling of paper and the scratching of a pen. He furrows his brow, blinking a few times, before the bright sunlight in the room and the sound of a foot tapping on the floor brings him fully into consciousness.

_What time is it?_

He sits bolt upright in bed and looks out toward his window. The sky is bright, clear, and blue. The shadows tell him it must be nearly midday, and his stomach drops. However, he’s startled out of his panic.

“Hey, good morning, sunshine! How’d you sleep?” Sokka asks with a big toothy grin from his spot at the foot of the bed.

Zuko blinks at him, then shakes his head lightly to dislodge any lasting drowsiness. “Sokka…” he mutters, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. He’d nearly forgotten about this arrangement, and the recollection settles rather comfortably in his bones. Sokka just watches him, smiling brightly all the while, despite his heavy eyelids. Zuko also finally notices that he’s dragged over one of his small dressing tables and there’s papers strewn about it. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

To his dismay, Sokka shakes his head, but he doesn’t seem upset about it. “Not really, no. I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says matter of factly and turns back to his papers to jot down one last note, then set the pen aside. The statement makes Zuko’s heart flutter, and he almost gets choked up again, but swallows down both the butterflies and the lump in his throat. “Fen came to get you this morning for breakfast, but she seemed more than happy to let you sleep and bring me some of your paperwork instead,” he says with a grin.

Zuko sighs heavily, running a hand down his face. “You didn’t have to do that… you should’ve woken me,” he says with a pout, though he does feel more than well rested. He didn’t expect it to work, but apparently his subconscious was more than happy with knowing somebody else was in the room with him. Somebody he trusted, someone he could count on. Someone he cared about, and who cared about him.

_Somebody I love…_

Before Zuko can dwell on it much longer, he’s interrupted by a low growling in his stomach. It makes Sokka laugh, and Zuko’s all too happy to get out of bed and back to work after a hot lunch.

* * *

As the day goes by, Zuko’s more than grateful for his good night of sleep, but he feels more than guilty when he catches Sokka continuously yawning as the day stretches on. In the late afternoon after a slow meeting, Sokka does disappear, and Zuko can only hope that he’s taking a nap somewhere for a little while. He’d come so close to falling face first against the table, Zuko nearly prepared himself to reach out and grab him.

Even with the lack of sleep, Sokka insists on staying in the Fire Lord’s chambers again.

“Look, I’ll bring some work with me to do during the night and keep watch, simple!”

“You need to sleep, Sokka.”

Sokka blows a raspberry and waves his hand in Zuko’s face. “Nah, don’t worry about me. I got a power nap in today, and I’ll catch a few zee’s tonight,” he says, still so warm and genuine, “But I promise, I’ll make sure nobody gets in.”

With a heavy sigh, Zuko relents later that evening, mostly because Sokka just refuses to leave his room. He’s changed into something more comfortable, at least, even though he clearly has no intention of sleeping anytime soon. His tiny makeshift desk is stacked with logs and decrees and letters, and he has a cup of tea by his side on the ottoman.

Even with his guilt, Zuko manages to drift off and sleep through the night once more.

He does so the following night as well, lulled to sleep by the soft scratching of pen on paper, Sokka silhouetted by the gentle glow of candlelight. He wakes a few times that night, but not as suddenly and violently as he had previously. He simply opens his eyes, lifts his head to see Sokka still sitting there, and focuses on the scratching of pen on paper, comforted by the knowledge that someone is watching over him so closely.

The next night, Zuko reluctantly gets dressed and watches Sokka prepare his work at his small table. He yawns heavily, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm. The exhaustion is more than apparent on his face, despite the few naps he’s taken over the last few days. He needs a thorough nights sleep, though, and Zuko grumbles under his breath at Sokka’s stubbornness.

“Ready for bed?” Sokka asks as Zuko climbs under the blankets, but he keeps himself seated upright.

“Yes,” he mumbles, tucking his hair behind his ears. He sighs, watching as Sokka turns around to look at his paperwork. “Listen,” he starts, and Sokka hums curiously and turns his head slightly, just enough for Zuko to see his profile, “You… you should sleep.”

As stubborn as ever, Sokka sighs and shakes his head. “Zuko, I’m fine.”

“You’re tired is what you are,” Zuko quips back, and if only to prove his point, Sokka yawns loudly. “I’ll be fine, just… just go to bed, you need it.”

“If I sleep, I sleep in here,” Sokka says bluntly, and even in the dim light Zuko can see his smirk. 

Zuko rolls his eyes. “I don’t need a babysitter,” he barks and leans back against his headboard, crossing his arms over his chest.

It makes Zuko’s frustration flare up when Sokka just laughs. “Come on, dude, I still have to shout before I enter a room so you don’t go all fire bender on me, I know you won’t sleep unless someone else is in here with you.” Zuko just pouts even more, glancing away with a flick of his head. “Do you want me to go get Azula? I’m sure she’d love to spend the night with her big brother,” Sokka teases, leaning forward onto the foot of his bed and framing his chin in his hands.

Zuko rolls his eyes again and grumbles under his breath. “Spirits, no, please don’t,” he huffs, “I know she said she’d protect me, but that’s a little too embarrassing.”

Sokka laughs again, but this time it doesn’t bother him as much. A comfortable silence falls over them for a while, and Zuko pulls the blankets up over himself a bit more, but just watches Sokka out of the corner of his eye. He’s staring at him, his chin still resting in his hands.

Before he can press him again, Sokka speaks. “Listen, if it’ll make you feel better, I won’t do any work tonight and I’ll sleep. Right here,” he says with a wave of his hand across the ottoman.

As much as Zuko wants Sokka to sleep in his own bed, to actually get a good nights rest, he admits that Sokka is right. He does need someone to stay in here with him. Just the prospect of being alone in his big, dark bedroom makes him nervous enough to know he won’t sleep well, if at all.

So, instead of protesting him, Zuko nods his head. “Okay,” he mutters, and finally slinks down more comfortably in his sheets. He listens as Sokka shuffles his papers, collects all of his pens together and hears them clink gently against his inkwell, and watches as the room goes dark when the candle is extinguished.

Sokka grunts as he leans back against the mattress, jostling it enough that Zuko can feel it. But, just when he thinks Sokka is settled in, he shifts again and huffs. Then shifts again and huffs, and again, and again. Zuko sighs sharply.

“Why don’t you just sleep up here?” he asks, and flinches when his voice comes out far louder than he intended it to. There was nothing weird about two friends sharing a bed, not at all. There’d been a few instances when they were traveling together when they’d huddled together for warmth, or had to share a blanket when someones inevitably got lost. So why did he feel like his face was on fire at suggesting it?

Below him, Sokka stills on his ottoman. “Huh?” he asks softly. Zuko can feel his eyes on him.

He clears his throat. “Just… sleep up here. This bed is huge, more than enough room for two of us,” he says, hoping his voice doesn’t sound as squeaky as he thinks it does, “We can both fit.”

Sokka doesn’t say anything for a few moments, so Zuko sits up enough to see his friend, still at the foot of the bed. The low light of the moon casts him in a soft gray light, and he’s staring right up at him. His cheeks look flushed, but Zuko can’t be certain. When their eyes lock, Sokka startles and clears his throat.

“Oh, uh, I mean, I don’t want to, uh, impose. I—“

Zuko can’t help laughing at him. “You already imposed yourself three nights ago,” he says, and Sokka snaps his mouth shut.

“Right,” he mutters, then finally stands up from his seat. He moves to the other side of the bed and sits down, bouncing the mattress. Zuko hears the two soft thunks of his slippers hitting the floor, and watches as his friend removes his jewelry and sets it on the bedside table. He takes another moment before finally, finally pulling the blankets down and tucking his legs in.

When he finally gets himself situated, laying on his back, there’s still a few feet between the two of them. Zuko never really understood why the bed had to be so huge, but it certainly had its perks; it apparently came in handy when two friends needed to unexpectedly share a bed.

“G’night, Zuko,” Sokka mutters before rolling over onto his side, facing away from the Fire Lord.

Zuko hums and settles his head into his pillow. “Goodnight.”

Neither of them mention how warm, how comfortable the bed feels with the other person there, filling in some of that empty space.

Zuko sleeps through the night without a problem.

* * *

When Zuko starts to wake, he thinks Mai is with him. He’s got his arms wrapped around a warm body, and his nose and buried in soft, sweet-smelling hair. Without thinking, he nuzzles in closer and breathes in deep as his drowsiness ebbs and fades. 

The person in his arms hums pleasantly at the sensation and shifts farther against his chest. Their cheek and nose are pressed into his shirt, burrowing as deep as they can to sap more of his body heat. It makes Zuko smile, and he pulls away just enough to look down at his companion. He’s met with dark hair, only… not dark enough.

He frowns softly, then pulls away more to catch their dark complexion, Water Tribe blue attire, and the deep hum that rises from their throat when they scoot closer to chase Zuko as he shifts.

_Sokka._

Zuko feels his cheeks flush immediately. In the night they’d somehow gotten completely tangled in one another. Sokka’s pressed right up against his chest, nuzzled into the fabric of his shirt, while his hands are cradled between their stomachs. Zuko managed to weave one of his thighs between Sokka’s legs, and has one of his arms draped over to rest his hand at the small of his back.

He feels like his heart is going to hammer right out of his chest. The rational part of his brain is screaming for him to pull away, to roll out of bed and away from the situation before Sokka wakes and realizes what’s happening, but he can’t bring himself to do so. There’s an increasingly loud part of his mind that keeps him still, forces him to soak in the feeling of Sokka pressed up against him, curled up tight in his arms, keeping the sheets warm between them. 

There’s no way he can ignore his feelings much longer, especially not when Sokka shifts again as he’s dragged out of his slumber and makes the sweetest little sound. It’s like a whimper, grumbling at the arrival of morning, but soft and breathy and high. It goes right into Zuko’s chest, where he locks it away to keep there forever. He wants to pull Sokka closer, to fall back asleep with him in his arms, but Sokka’s consciousness is returning.

“Hrrm,” he grumbles, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles. When he shifts, the top of his head brushes against Zuko’s lips, and it pains the Fire Lord to hold back from letting the contact linger.

“G’morning,” Zuko mumbles in return, and finally Sokka cranes his head back to look at him.

He blinks a few times and squeezes them shut tight for a moment. When he opens them again, they’re slightly crossed, and Zuko tenses when he feels a huff of Sokka’s breath land squarely against his chin. They’re so close, and it seems like Sokka is finally registering that.

In a flurry of motion and a few bumping elbows, Sokka shoots upright and stares down at his friend. Sokka’s cheeks are now red enough to match Zuko’s, and his eyes are wide as saucers.

“Uuh…” His jaw is slack, and it takes a few moments before Zuko can tell that all of his drowsiness has left him. “I… Zuko, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize I moved around so much in my sleep,” he says with a tight laugh, but his jaw quickly falls open again. He’s staring down at the sheets between them rather than at his friends face, his fluster nearly palpable.

Zuko swallows loudly and shakes his head, lifting himself up on one elbow. “It’s okay, I… didn’t know I did either,” he mumbles. With the way Sokka had snuggled up to him, he thought perhaps he had stayed still and Sokka was the one to move. A quick glance proved that Zuko had been the one to shift a farther distance, but he swallows down those butterflies for now. “It’s okay, I swear,” he reiterates when Sokka still looks like he’s going to explode from embarrassment, “It’s nothing we’re not used to, right?”

That gets Sokka to snap his mouth closed and look up at his friend. “Yeah, right,” he mumbles, but his voice tapers off. 

They both just stare at each other, and Zuko thinks the silence should feel more awkward. 

Sokka looks so handsome in front of him, eyes still soft from sleep, and hair tousled and loose around his face. His shirt sits loosely on his shoulders, and his collarbones flash handsomely through the cut of the neck. His hands are fiddling nervously in his lap, covered by a tangle of maroon silk sheets, and Zuko wants so badly to reach out and hold them, to keep him from picking at his cuticles and instead litter kisses across his knuckles. 

It hits him like a boulder.

He’s in love. 

He finally admits to himself that he had eyes for Sokka ever since he joined their group at the air temple. It was a strange phenomenon, foreign to him. He thought maybe he’d wanted to so badly be his friend, and that was it. He’d ignored the way jealousy had risen in his throat upon seeing him with Suki, and so hopelessly in love with her at that. But then he’d think of Mai and feel guilty, confused, conflicted, and compartmentalize it all.

He had never felt more relieved upon seeing Sokka after Sozin’s Comet.

Time apart had proven to be strange. He missed his friends, but his mind always settled on Sokka. On his bad jokes, his barking laugh, his sharp grin. He yearned for their time together, but hoped at the same time that such feelings would fade as they spent time away from one another. Instead, he only became more desperate. Still, he ignored it as best he could.

It worked for a while, too. He threw himself into his work, barely giving much else the light of day. Still, every time Aang visited, he asked how the two Water Tribe siblings were doing, and dreaded the possibility of hearing that Sokka had found a new partner since breaking things off with Suki. 

Seeing him walk into his office, now two years ago, as the new Southern Water Tribe ambassador, had taken his breath away. He hadn’t realized how desperately he missed his friend, but now it sent all those conflicting feelings swirling in his head again. Being in such close proximity to each other, working, living, and eating together for the last two years had set that fire in his heart ablaze again. Perhaps it had never really gone out.

Little did he know, Sokka was thinking much of the same thing, but wouldn’t dare say so right now.

Sokka clears his throat, finally looking away from Zuko to hop out of bed. “We should get ready for work,” he says, voice wavering. Zuko can still see that the tip of his ears are flushed pink, and bites back a smile. He watches as his friend shimmies on his slippers and moves to the foot of the bed to gather up his things from the night before.

As he stares, Zuko finds he doesn’t want to get up and follow. He wants to drag Sokka back into bed and hold him there, to fall back asleep together in the warm light of the morning sun, and stay there forever.


	4. But we'll end up alright

“You’re in love with _Zuko!?_ ”

“ _Quiet_ , somebody’s gonna hear you!” Sokka hisses as he claps a hand over Aang’s mouth.

Aang grumbles, sticking his tongue out to lick across his palm to make Sokka pull away with a grimace. It only reveals Aang’s huge, goofy grin, plastered across his face.

“I can’t believe you have a crush on Zuko!” he says with a laugh, though does keep his voice down as requested.

Sokka sighs heavily and wipes his hand on his shirt. “I can’t either.”

Aang chuckles. “I mean, it’s not that surprising. He’s a great guy,” he says with a shrug.

The Avatar was visiting for a series of meetings regarding plans for the lasting Fire Nation colonies in the Earth kingdom, and to check up on Zuko, but they had a bit of downtime before dinner tonight. Sokka had dragged him away to one of the palace gardens because he _really_ needed to talk to him.

“Why are you freaking out about it?” Aang asks.

Sokka grumbles and shrugs. He really didn’t know why he was freaking out about it. That, or he had lots of reasons to be freaking out about it. “Uh, I guess because he’s the Fire Lord, I’m an ambassador beneath him, I’ve never felt like this about a guy before, and I’m sure he doesn’t feel the same way!” he drawls, pulling out a finger for each reason, “And he’s my friend, it’s so weird!”

Aang sighs and rolls his eyes. “You’re telling me you don’t wanna be friends with your partner?” he asks, but it’s all teasing.

Sokka rolls his eyes back at him. “You know what I mean. It’s weird! He’s one of my best friends and… and I don’t wanna scare him off, you know?”

“I know, I know,” Aang concedes with a warm smile and wave of his hands, “But… how do you know he doesn’t feel the same way? Seems like he didn’t want to let go of you in bed this morning.”

Sokka groans loudly and buries his face in his hands, but it doesn’t hide the bright red tips of his ears. “No, no. We must’ve both woken up at the same time and he didn’t realize what was happening, like I did.”

Aang sighs and leans back on his hands where he sits in the grass. 

“I just… I care about him a lot,” Sokka continues, dropping his hands heavily into his lap and staring at the grass between them. His face softens, and he can’t stop the words from tumbling past his lips. “And he’s so nice, and caring. Me from six years ago would think I’m crazy for saying so, but… he really is. And his jokes might be bad, but he’s still really, really funny.” He hides his face in his hands as he feels color flood his cheeks again. “And he’s so handsome, Aang, he’s so _gorgeous_.” It makes him want to cry from admitting all of this out loud, from equal parts terror and relief, like a weight is being lifted off his shoulders, finally being able to tell someone about this, but now it’s out in the open for all to see.

It makes Aang laugh softly, and Sokka feels his gentle hand rest on his knee. “You really got it bad, huh?” he teases, which only makes Sokka groan again, though he weakly nods his head.

Once they knew Zuko could be trusted all those years ago, Sokka had to admit the guy was handsome. He hadn’t noticed his growing attraction right away. Not for a long time, either. Looking back, he remembers small moments, little things that, in hindsight, really made it clear that he was developing feelings for the other teen. But he had been so desperately in love with Suki, he could ignore it.

Part of him hated the fact that almost as soon as he and Suki broke it off, he was already looking for comfort in Zuko. It made him feel guilty, but he really couldn’t blame himself. He often thinks about that night, when he’d read over the new decree to legalize same-sex romantic relations, and Zuko had admitted to him that he wasn’t sure if he liked men or not. Even if it was uncertain, it nagged at the corner of Sokka’s mind always, and he had more than a few daydreams of eloping with the Fire Lord. It all made him feel like a giddy teenager.

It had creeped up on him over time, and it wasn’t much of a surprise. He indulged in his daydreams and fantasies, but left it at that. It was that morning, waking up in Zuko’s arms, that it suddenly hit him like a boulder. He hardly knew what to say, and could only imagine he looked like a floundering fish just staring down at his friend. His skin felt like it was on fire, he wanted to badly to flee, but he also so badly wanted to curl back up under those sheets and revel in that comfort once more. To _really_ soak it in on purpose. 

“I don’t even know where to go from here,” Sokka whines as he drops his hands. He pouts and glances up at Aang again. “You’re the Avatar, do your past lives ever give you relationship advice?” he asks, trying to be half-joking, but really, desperately in need of some guidance.

Aang laughs. “Well, not really,” he says with a sheepish shrug, “I just… followed my heart, I guess.”

Sokka huffs and flops backward till his back hits the grass. “That’s not helpful,” he grumbles. He wanted something like… a checklist. Do steps one, two, three, then break the ice and hope it doesn’t blow up in your face!

“Of course it’s helpful, Sokka,” Aang says as he kicks gently at one of Sokka’s boots, “Just… listen to your heart. If you really love him, you should tell him! And I get that it’s scary, telling someone you love them like that, but the worst that’ll happen is he’ll say he doesn’t feel the same way.”

“No, the worst that’ll happen is he’ll hate me forever and banish me back to the South Pole!” Sokka barks as he waves his hands in the air.

“Spirits, Sokka, _listen_.” Suddenly Sokka feels a hand fisting in the hem of his shirt and he’s yanked upright. He makes a surprised squeaking sound, but swallows it down when Aang is up in his face. “He won’t do that to you! You know Zuko, he’s gone through a lot and he won’t be so cruel like that,” he says firmly, and Sokka keeps his mouth shut tight. When Aang gets serious, even a little, it’s quiet time for everybody else. “I promise you, just saying something will make everything okay. Either he reciprocates, or he doesn’t, and then you’ll be able to move on.”

Sokka swallows loudly and nods his head. When it was put into such simple terms, it really didn’t sound so bad. Nerves still chew at his stomach, though, and he’s sure they’ll never really go away. “So… I should tell him.” It’s a statement, not a question. He knows he should tell Zuko, mostly for his own sake. Getting turned down and dealing with a few days of awkwardness was manageable. He only hoped he’d actually be able to get over it, because part of him thinks he would always be in love with his friend.

“Yes, you should tell him,” Aang agrees with a nod of his head, letting go of Sokka’s shirt as well. “It doesn’t have to be today, or even this week, but… you should tell him.”

Sokka nods his head. “Yeah… okay,” he nearly whispers as his nerves tingle out into his fingers at the mere prospect of it. Before he can voice is lasting concern, though, Aang is hopping up onto his feet with a terrible grin on his face.

“I am _definitely_ going to tell Katara about this.”

* * *

“I don’t mean to doubt your judgement, but… it’s really weird seeing Azula here like this,” Katara murmurs to Zuko. They were all situated in his office, going through some paperwork for organizational matters during their free time before dinner.

Zuko glances up from where they are at his desk, looking up to Azula across the room, reorganizing one of his bookshelves. He can’t help laughing softly. “I understand. I’m still not really used to seeing her here either,” he whispers before grabbing for the pile of loose scrolls they were attempting to organize.

Azula and Katara were doing a very good job of making everything neat and tidy and easy to find, but Zuko couldn’t focus for longer than a few minutes at a time. He just kept thinking about that morning, about the initial pleasure of sharing a bed with someone, the sudden shock at realizing exactly who was with him, and the surprising swell of adoration that followed the realization. Sokka had fit so perfectly in his arms, it made him ache that he couldn’t feel that again right now.

Apparently his wandering mind is obvious, because suddenly Katara is waving one of her hands in front of his face and saying, “Hello, Earth to Zuko.”

Zuko blinks and shakes his head in an attempt to dislodge his wandering thoughts. “Sorry, I was just… thinking,” he mutters before unrolling a scroll to check its contents.

“About…?” Katara asks with a hum as she does the same with another scroll before neatly slotting it on the shelf beside them.

Zuko was never good at lying, and now that he’s on the spot, he feels like he might as well just say it.

“I was… thinking about Sokka,” he murmurs, and he catches the way she arches a brow curiously at him.

“You were thinking about my brother?” she asks with a soft laugh, as she takes the scroll from him to put on the shelf. He can see that across the room, Azula has paused her work to look at them and listen in to their conversation.

Now with two pairs of eyes on him, Zuko starts to fluster. “Y-yeah, we, uh, he stayed in my room with me last night,” he says quietly, and both the women laugh softly.

“We knew that, Zuko, he’s been in there with you for the last several nights,” Azula says, slowly making her way over to them, “And it’s been a good thing, too, apparently. You’ve never looked more well rested.”

Zuko huffs and rolls his eyes, but at least feels relief that neither of them are chiding him for needing someone to sleep with him. Well, they didn’t exactly know that part of it yet. Might as well spill it.

“Yeah, well, uh… he slept in the bed with me last night,” he mutters, and Azula arches a brow at that. Beside him, Katara has crossed her arms over her chest, but she seems more intrigued than anything. Neither of them say anything, though, clearly waiting to see where this is going, if anywhere at all. Zuko feels like he’s going to implode from the sheer embarrassment of it all. Might as well go out with a bang. “We… when we woke up, we were sort of… we somehow started… we were all tangled together.” He tacks on a strained laugh at the end, trying to play it off as a silly little moment, but neither of them join in.

Both of them are silent. Zuko can’t bear to look up from the pile of scrolls, but he can see their heads turn in his peripheral, clearly sharing a look with each other. Then, Katara barks out a laugh, followed by a quiet chuckle from his sister.

“You were _cuddling_?” Katara asks, like she’s in disbelief.

Zuko feels his cheeks flush. “Uhh, I mean, I guess?” 

“Did you at least enjoy it?” Azula asks. The question just makes Zuko blush even more, and it must be obvious, given that Azula laughs and adds, “I take that as a yes.”

“So what if I did?” he snaps, quickly turning away to preoccupy himself with a different bookshelf, giving his mind something else to at least half focus on so he doesn’t melt him into a puddle on the floor.

Azula laughs again. “It’s about time,” she says, and Zuko bristles.

Katara interjects before he can try to defend himself. “What do you mean?” she asks Azula, her smile still plainly evident in her voice, greatly amused by this newfound information.

“I thought it was obvious that Zuko has a little crush on your brother,” she says, and Katara lets out a curious gasp, “Ever since he came back to the Fire Nation as Ambassador, my brother won’t stop talking about him. He gets this smitten look in his eye whenever he brings up Sokka.”

Zuko groans softly, but Katara is completely enraptured by this. “Are you serious?”

“Oh, I thought he’d never shut up the day he visited me after he modeled for some of Sokka’s drawings. He kept going on and on about how amazing it was, how skilled Sokka is,” she laughs, and Katara giggles beside her.

Zuko doesn’t notice he’s had his shoulders hunched up till he feels a soft hand on his arm. He initially flinches away, completely mortified that even the slightest bit of information is out in the open, and afraid he might explode if he has any more attention put on him.

“Zuko, come on.” It’s Katara. He feels her hand on his arm again, and this time she pulls till he turns back around to face them. He doesn’t look up, instead pretending to be extremely interested in a book he grabbed from the shelf at random. “Are you upset?” she asks, leaning down slightly so her face comes into his line of sight a little. It sounds like a genuine question, which makes a little bit of tension leave his body.

He purses his lips and fiddles with the corner of one of the book pages. “I don’t know…”

Both women let out sympathetic sighs. 

“Oh, Zuko, we’re not _really_ making fun of you,” Azula explains, “It’s just… a silly little thing, you know?”

Zuko hums and shrugs in response, snapping the book shut gently.

“Yeah, it’s nothing to be… I don’t know, embarrassed about,” Katara adds with a warm smile, then, with a smirk, “Well, Sokka is a little embarrassing on his own, but evidently he knows how to charm people.”

That rips a little chuckle out of Zuko, and he sheepishly looks up at her. “Yeah, I guess he does.”

She smiles again, then moves back to her pile of scrolls at his desk. He’s grateful for the space, and allows himself to let out a long breath. 

“Is it true, though?” she asks as she slots another scroll onto its new shelf.

“Hm?” Zuko hums, gathering up his scattered, flustered mind a bit now as he recalls what he was doing.

“Do you have romantic feelings for my brother?” she asks, and he truly can’t read her tone.

He stutters a bit, losing the fight to keep his cheeks from going pink again. “I… I think so?” he murmurs, like he doesn’t even trust his answer. When he notices his hands are shaking as he grabs for a scroll, he clenches them into fists and drops them to his sides. He’d already had this crisis earlier that day, but he really, truly was in love with Sokka. It was manifesting in a way he’d never experienced before. He felt like his heart was going to flutter out of his chest, and butterflies were swarming his belly. He almost wanted to cry, he longed for him so horribly. 

“Don’t lie to yourself, Zuko,” Azula says as she leafs through a stack of papers. She quirks a brow at him when he looks up to meet her gaze. “And don’t lie to us.”

Zuko clenches his jaw and stands up straight then, tightening his fists. “Okay, I won’t,” he states, and both women go still as they stare at him. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but his instinct is apparently just to prove Azula wrong. Or… right. He takes a deep breath. “I— I love him. I’m in love with Sokka.”

It goes so silent that they could hear a pin drop. Zuko’s spiteful confidence is rapidly fading. He can’t believe he said that out loud, and now it was just there, hanging in the air between them. And _neither of them were saying anything_.

His eyes flash nervously between the two. Azula is just staring with a crooked grin on her face, equal parts surprised at the blatant confession and pleased about being correct. Katara’s eyes are wide, jaw slack, but her lips are curled up ever so slightly at the corners. In the end, before Zuko can really contemplate just bolting out of the room, she’s the first to speak.

“You… are _in love_ … with my brother,” she says.

Slowly, Zuko nods his head. “Yes, I am.”

“Wow,” Katara gasps, then she really breaks out into an ear-to-ear smile. “ _Wow_ ,” she barks, and laughs, “I can’t believe it!” She reaches her hands up to her head, resting her palms against her temples as she processes the information.

Zuko winces and looks back down at his desk, nudging a few sheets of paper around with his fingers. “Weird, right?” he asks, again tacking on another strained laugh, trying to play it off as a joke and failing horribly.

Sensing that Zuko is getting the wrong idea, Katara drops her hands and reaches out to place one on his shoulder. “No, no, not at all,” she assures. “I mean… I’ll never understand why anyone would be interested in _Sokka_ , but that’s just because he’s my brother,” she adds with a roll of her eyes, but she’s still smiling.

It suddenly occurs to Zuko that he was afraid Katara would be _angry_ with him for having feelings for her brother. He’s not entirely sure why, other than perhaps some residual feelings of despisal from when they were teenagers, but he knows that’s long since passed. He really didn’t want this to cause a rift between him and Sokka, but he didn’t want the same thing to happen with Katara either.

So, he asks. “You’re… not mad?”

Katara just furrows her brow at him, and that’s all he needs to see to know that his assumption was wrong. “Of course I’m not mad,” she says, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze, leeching out any lasting tension in his body. “If he makes you happy, and you end up making him happy, there’s nothing to be mad about.”

Zuko slumps forward, palms against the table, and lets out a breathless laugh. His heart doesn’t feel so tight anymore. At the same time, he feels a little more confident in his feelings for Sokka. It’s no longer this looming issue, destined to drive the two of them apart forever due to lack of reciprocation. Well, he was still scared of Sokka’s reaction, but at least Katara had his back if it blew up in his face.

“Thank the Spirits,” he mumbles, and Katara laughs softly again.

“I’m just surprised it took you this long to say it out loud,” Azula interjects with a smile as she begins leafing through paperwork again, “You really never shut up about him, you know.” Zuko smiles apologetically, and is nearly startled by Azula’s tender-eyed reaction. She looks so happy for him, and he has to look away before his heart bursts in his chest.

“You know…” Katara adds, and Zuko glances at her out of the corner of his eye. She has a sneaky grin on her face, and it makes his stomach drop. “I _will_ be telling Aang about this.” 

* * *

Neither Sokka nor Zuko can convince Aang or Katara otherwise.

Katara leaves Zuko’s office before he can get on his knees and beg her to keep quiet. She nearly runs headfirst into Aang as he’s rushing into the palace to, of course, find her.

“I need to tell you something,” they both say in unison. They laugh at the overlap, and Katara ushers him back outside with a small nudge to his ribcage. 

“You go first,” Katara urges as she looks around for any wandering ears, but Aang shakes his head.

“No, you go first, my news will blow yours right out of the water.”

“Oh, I doubt that, my information is pretty good,” she quips with a grin, hands on her hips. 

“Together, then,” Aang insists, which makes Katara laugh, but she agrees.

They count down from three, then, with low voices:

“Sokka is in love with Zuko.”

“Zuko is in love with Sokka.”

Then, silence. 

Neither of them had been expecting that. They blink at one another, their giddy smiles fading to confusion, then to dawning realization, and finally to pure, unadulterated excitement.

Things couldn’t have turned out better.

* * *

Of course Aang and Katara had to find a way to get the two of them to confess to one another. Aang relayed what he had told Sokka, and Katara divulges that while they hadn’t had a similar conversation, Zuko seemed relieved enough at her reaction that he may be seriously considering telling Sokka. 

They quickly bring Azula into the loop, and she seems all too pleased to learn that Sokka has feelings for her brother in return. She hadn’t quite learned enough about Sokka to be able to read him that closely, but she’d certainly seen his wandering glances during meetings and his unabashed willingness to aid Zuko in his time of need. She was more than happy to work with them to get the truth out of both parties.

During the rest of Aang and Katara’s week long visit, the three of them make ample efforts to shove Zuko and Sokka in the right direction. They’d agreed to not let slip that their feelings were reciprocated on both ends, but as the days go by, and as Sokka continues to share a bed with the Fire Lord in the name of friendship and protection and nothing else, it certainly begins to grow frustrating.

“We could just tell them,” Azula sighs as the three schemers sit in the secretary’s office. Fen was off doing business, so they had the small room to themselves for the time being. They knew this information had to be kept secret from any other officials, seeing as it wasn’t in the best interest for the Fire Lord to be in love with an Ambassador, and vice versa. So, they rarely had time to converse away from prying eyes and ears.

“No, we can’t!” Aang cries, but still groans at the sheer ridiculousness this was devolving into, and flops back in his seat. “They have to do it on their own. They have to be _certain_ they want to tell each other without _us_ telling them the answer.”

Katara pinches at the bridge of her nose as she leans against Azula’s desk. “I almost let it slip to Sokka yesterday that I knew he loves Zuko,” she admits, and Azula laughs while Aang gasps. “He’s so dense, I’m sure he didn’t even notice, but it’s getting _really_ difficult,” she huffs.

“I know,” Aang mumbles and rubs his eyes with his knuckles, “I keep ending up alone with Zuko and every time I try to ask him about, like… if he thinks he’ll ever get married, or whatever I think will work, I just want to blurt it out.”

“Zuko has been telling me what he’s been thinking,” Azula says as she inspects her fingernails, playing it nonchalant despite having what she considered a bombshell of information. She gets her desired reaction, both Katara and Aang sitting bolt upright and looking at her attentively.

“What is he saying!?” Aang asks as he leaps up from his seat and nearly jumps into her face.

She flinches and leans back, but still grins. “Oh, lots of things,” she drawls before moving to sit at her desk, taking her sweet time by smoothing her clothes and crossing her legs deliberately.

Again, that gets a desired reaction. Aang slaps his hands onto her desk, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he stares down at her. “Like what!?” he asks again, and Azula laughs.

“Just this morning, after breakfast, he told me about what happened when they woke up today,” she says, folding her hands in her lap. Katara and Aang are staring wide-eyed down at her, on the edge of their figurative seats. “He said they were all tangled in each other again, like they were several days ago, and Zuko had to rip himself away from Sokka. As he put it, he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from… kissing him.”

“They have to tell each other!” Aang nearly yells, now waving his arms above his head in a mixture of excitement and exasperation. Katara shushes him harshly, slapping his shoulder.

Before they can begin squabbling, Azula clears her throat to grab their attention. “I do have a plan,” she says, and it is shortly set into motion.

* * *

The last night of Aang and Katara’s stay lines up with a small celebration. The head chef in the palace kitchen was retiring, and Zuko wanted to make a point of properly seeing her off. She’d been cooking in the palace since he and Azula were children, and he felt it was only right to praise his staff where praise was due.

Being a party for the cook, the main hall was filled with enormous amounts of food and drink, more than was feasible, but the kitchen staff were more than eager to supply it. Copious amounts of alcohol aided in attendees’ ability to eat more than they would normally, and gave Aang and Katara the perfect opportunity to make sure Zuko and Sokka’s filters were down just enough to perhaps let their feelings slip out.

At the end of the night, when the sun had long since set and the moon was high, Zuko made one last toast, and only stumbled over his words a little bit because of his few glasses of Fire Nation whiskey. The chef received raucous applause and congratulations, and everyone was ushered out of the hall to return home, drunk and full and happy.

As everyone was filtering out of the palace, Aang and Katara made their moves.

Sokka was helping the kitchen staff clean up as much as he could, though he’d had his fair share of alcohol and was a little too tipsy for them to feel comfortable allowing him to carry the meat platter adorned with carving knives. Aang pulls him aside, much to the relief of the staff and the dismay of Sokka, who pouts at his friend.

“I just wanted to help,” Sokka whines, and Aang laughs. 

“I know, buddy, but they’ve got it under control,” he says as he leads Sokka out the door, watching Katara’s back recede down the hallway as she chases after Zuko.

The Fire Lord is seeing his guests off, waving from the front door of the palace, when Katara catches up with him.

“You ready to turn in for the night?” she asks as the stragglers hobble out of sight.

“Yeah,” Zuko sighs, and heads back inside with her.

“Have you asked Sokka yet?” she asks, trying her best to act casual and not at all like she was on her last legs trying to get them to confess to one another.

“Asked him what?” he asks with a furrowed brow as they head down the halls leading to his office.

She sighs and bumps him with her hip. “You know, if he likes you, too?” she explains, and the recollection shows so clearly on his face that she has to stifle a laugh.

“N—no, I haven’t,” he murmurs, curling in on himself slightly. He seems much more sober now, and she can only hope he doesn’t clam up.

“You should!” Katara presses, more firmly than she had been for the last week. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t want it to happen before she and Aang left for the South Pole again. 

“I will!” he hisses, because even if she hadn’t been overtly clear on her wishes, he’d certainly noticed how often talk of Sokka and romance in general popped up in their conversations. Zuko had been heavily considering it, but it still terrified him that Sokka might react negatively, no matter how many times Katara assured him that if he didn’t feel the same way, it would certainly turn into a means for teasing rather than disgust. Zuko couldn’t tell if that made him feel better or not.

As they come closer to his office, they can hear muffled voices, clearly Sokka and a much quieter Aang, but he can’t make out their words.

Down the adjacent hall, heading to the same destination, Aang is practically yanking Sokka by his arm. 

“What if he haaates me, though,” Sokka whines as he drags his feet across the carpet.

“He won’t hate you, Sokka, just tell him!” Aang insists, “Wouldn’t you want him to tell you if he felt like this?”

That was the closest Aang would ever allow himself to hint at there possibly being reciprocation, by framing it as a hypothetical. It worked nearly every time he brought it up.

Sokka pouts, but grumbles out a quiet, “Yeah…”

“There you have it,” Aang says with a firm nod of his head, giving his friend a firm yank as they come around the corner. Down the hall, he sees Katara disappearing into Zuko’s office. Perfect timing. He turns to look back at Sokka with a bright smile. “Just tell him, Sokka. Nothing bad will come of it, I promise.”

It’s a good thing Sokka is just dense enough and just tipsy enough that he doesn’t read into that statement as deeply as he might have otherwise. He just sighs in resignation and ambles to the office door with Aang at his heels.

“Looks like both the drunks made it back in one piece,” Katara remarks as Sokka shuffles through the door.

“Yup, safe and sound!” Aang says with a smile and a pat to Sokka’s back. “Are you really going to try to get more work done?” he asks with an arched brow as Zuko sits at his desk.

“Yes,” says Zuko.

“No,” says Sokka.

Everyone there knows Sokka is correct, but Katara and Aang just laugh.

“Well, don’t stay up too late,” Katara orders, ruffling Sokka’s hair as she passes him. He grumbles as he half-assedly fixes his wolfs tail, but a few strays come loose anyway. 

With a few quiet goodnights, Aang and Katara head off to their sleeping accommodations, whispering amongst themselves.

* * *

As predicted, neither Zuko nor Sokka get any work done, no matter how hard Zuko tries. He begins reading over some new legislation that needs approval, but the way Sokka is currently boring a hole into his head with his staring is very distracting. He half expects Sokka to quickly glance away, or to at least have an incredulous or uninterested look on his face when their eyes meet, but he’s instead met with something akin to introspection.

A sharp, “What?” rises in his throat, but it peters out before it reaches his lips. He wants to blame his infatuation on the alcohol, but he knows that’s not entirely the case here. The light intoxication keeps him from flustering right away, and the two manage to just stare at each other, into each others eyes.

Zuko has noticed it before, but he can’t help always being blown away with how bright Sokka’s eyes are every time he pays attention to it. The steely blue turns gray in the low, orange light of the room, and they’re twinkling with something Zuko can’t place at the moment. He’s not even all gussied up, and his hair isn’t even neat due to Katara’s meddling, but he’s wearing those damned earrings that he’d gotten at the Fire Festival. Zuko had been enraptured the entire night. Every time he spoke with Sokka, the way they moved with him captivated the Fire Lord. The beads glinted handsomely against his skin, just as bright as his eyes. 

He was so beautiful it made Zuko’s heart ache.

He wanted so badly to reach out, to touch his cheek, his jaw, to thumb the jewelry and watch it glitter with his blue eyes.

Zuko’s heart was going to beat right out of his chest. 

Across from him, much could be said similarly about Sokka’s current train of thought. He did come here with the intention to help Zuko with some late-night work, despite knowing he was far too tipsy to do so, but he can’t even bring himself to pick up a pen. He’s just sitting across from the Fire Lord, staring.

As evident by his copious drawings of his friend, he found the man attractive. Handsome. Beautiful. Gorgeous, even. There were many adjectives he could apply to Zuko, and they were predominantly positive.

The Fire Lord looked beautiful no matter what, but it especially hit him hard when he woke up every morning beside him. Groggy, hair messy, eyelids drooped low as drowsiness lingers. He looked so _soft_ , and he felt that way, too. The guy was certainly all toned muscle, but he was comfortable. Sokka yearned to be held tightly in his arms again, to just fall against his chest and remain there for eternity.

Just thinking about confessing has him sobering up quickly, but he decides to take advantage of his lasting inebriation, while his filter is still somewhat down, to spill the beans and be done with it.

That is, he would’ve done so if Zuko didn’t speak first.

“Sokka, you’re really beautiful, you know that?”

Sokka certainly wasn’t expecting that, and his mouth falls open around nothing. 

The initial shock and silence immediately has Zuko worried. _Was that the wrong thing to say? Is he uncomfortable? Should I have kept my mouth shut?_

It must show on his face, because Sokka blinks loudly and snaps his mouth shut. “Oh, I, uh,” he stammers, even more color rising in his cheeks, “Um… thank you.”

A beat of silence.

“You are, too, y’know…”

Zuko quirks a brow, almost missing his muttered words, so quiet and nearly drowned out by the questions and nerves swirling around in his mind. “Huh?”

“You… you’re really beautiful, too,” Sokka manages to clarify, and he finally stops staring and instead looks down at his lap, where his hands are wringing together nervously.

Now it’s Zuko’s turn to shift through various shades of red. He looks down at his own lap, but his eyes are wide. That had gone straight to his heart, and he never felt more sure of his feelings in his life than he did in this moment.

Confidence bolstered, his looks back up at his friend, who glances back sheepishly. “What is this?” Zuko asks as he waves his hands between them. He needed to just face this head on, to get an answer.

Sokka’s eyes flit across his desk, then back up to Zuko. He’s confused, the gears barely turning in his head. “Wh… what’s what?”

“What are we? What is this between us?” Zuko elaborates, waving his hands around some more, which Sokka follows with his eyes.

Sokka flusters, then gives a little shrug. “I… I don’t know,” he admits, because he doesn’t. He knows how he feels, but he doesn’t know how to apply that to their relationship just yet, not right his moment.

Meanwhile, Zuko is almost in disbelief at Sokka’s reserved emotions. This man, who was notorious for being the charmer of the gang; who, to the dismay of those close to him, managed to attract the gaze of many girls and women throughout his life; who had even stumbled into an impromptu haiku competition just to have the eyes of half a dozen women on him. He may be awkward, but he knew when to crank up the charm for his own benefit. 

Zuko had prepared himself to be laughed at, for Sokka to take it as some boost to his ego and ride off of it for the rest of their lives while turning him down. He was prepared to have his heart broken, but he was not getting the bombastic reaction he expected.

So, Zuko sighs heavily and rests his face in his hands. “I don’t know either,” he mumbles, “I don’t know what to do here…”

There’s a beat of silence, then he hears Sokka getting up from his seat. He drops his hands to find Sokka standing beside him with a hand outstretched. Zuko eyes it curiously, then looks up to meet his eyes. His brow is drawn together, but a nervous smile twitches on his lips. Tentatively, Zuko takes his hand, and is easily lifted to his feet.

“I guess we have that in common,” Sokka murmurs, and neither of them let go.

Slowly, Sokka lifts his other hand to Zuko’s cheek, cradling it gently, his thumb brushing the scarred tissue under his eye. Zuko leans into it without even thinking, and he can’t bring himself to be scared of that.

“Tell me to stop,” Sokka whispers as he leans in closer. He’s been wanting this so badly. So badly for the last several years, but increasingly so over the last several months. He’s wanted to touch Zuko, to really feel him, to taste his lips and lose himself. But, he’s still afraid. He knows his hands would be shaking if he wasn’t completely infatuated with the feeling of Zuko’s cheek in his palm.

Instead of doing as Sokka asks, Zuko mutters, “I don’t think I want you to.”

So Sokka kisses him.

It’s soft, nervous, both their lips are a little chapped and the predominant taste is whiskey, but the candles around the room flicker excitedly with Zuko’s heartbeat. He reaches up to hold onto Sokka’s forearm, to keep his hand there against his cheek, and Sokka seems all too eager to oblige, cupping his jaw more deliberately. 

Zuko feels so overwhelmed, but in the best possible way. That fire in his heart is burning almost unbearably hot, and Sokka can feel it on his lips. It makes Sokka hungry for more, and he deepens the kiss for only a moment, reveling in how Zuko sighs against him and squeezes his arm, before reluctantly pulling away. He doesn’t go far, and Zuko tries to close the gap between them again. It sends Sokka’s heart soaring.

Instead, he asks, “Okay?”

Sokka’s eyes are so bright, so tender, so vulnerable, Zuko thinks he might melt. Rather than answer verbally, he just nods his head, and lets his eyes fall shut as he closes the distance again. Sokka lets out the cutest little squeak of surprise, but gladly indulges him in a more forceful kiss. 

That night, they don’t force themselves to opposite sides of the bed. Neither of them wants to let go of the other, and they fall into the sheets, lips barely parting, and curl up in each others arms. When they finally, finally, concede and situate themselves to fall asleep, Sokka nuzzles himself into the crook of Zuko’s neck. He’s so, so warm, and he squeezes his hand where their fingers are intertwined. 

Zuko wraps his arm around Sokka’s waist, holding them flush together, and hums happily at the affection. Gently, he buries his nose in the top of Sokka’s hair and kisses the crown of his head. It feels so right, so comfortable, and Sokka fits perfectly in his arms.

They feel like they could cry, but instead they murmur quiet love to one another, and drift off to sleep.

  
  



	5. You give me more than anything

This has to be kept a secret, they know that. 

No matter how badly they wanted to kiss each other when they met during the day, no matter how badly they wanted to mutter pet names to one another across the meeting table, no matter how badly they simply wanted to hold hands as they wandered the halls of the palace, they had to keep their distance.

The last thing Zuko wants is other diplomats thinking that the Southern Water Tribe will get special treatment because he’s in a relationship with their Ambassador, and Sokka wants that even less.

They didn’t even tell Katara and Aang before they left the next day.

“You know Aang, he’s still a kid, he’ll accidentally blurt it out at some big meeting and then we’ll have a scandal on our hands,” Sokka had said that morning when they woke up, sitting upright in the sheets with Zuko’s head in his lap so he could play with his hair. They were already having trouble getting up, not quite wanting to leave the soft comfort of each others arms.

“I hope you know my sister will probably figure it out right away,” Zuko mumbled in return, shutting his eyes when Sokka scratched his scalp softly.

And figure it out immediately, she does. 

“Oh, would you two get a room?” she scoffs when she comes to deliver some paperwork to Zuko’s office.

Both men nearly jump out of their skins. They hadn’t even been doing anything, simply bent over a new decree together at the table, but they may as well have been in each others laps.

“What?” Sokka squeaks, and Azula rolls her eyes.

“Oh, don’t _‘what’_ me, I can tell you two finally confessed,” she hums.

They both just stare at her, dumbfounded. “I… what?” Zuko asks this time, and Azula rolls her eyes again, dropping the paperwork on the desk with a _thump_.

“Oh, please, Sokka may as well have been whispering sweet nothings to you, what with how he was staring.”

Sokka goes beet red and bristles. “Hey!” he yelps. As hard as he tries not to, his voice still cracks.

Zuko just hides his face in his hands, but it doesn’t do well to cover his blush. “Spirits, help me…”

Azula chuckles. “Spirits can’t help you here, Zuzu,” she teases, before swiftly turning on her heel and heading back to her office, leaving Zuko and Sokka to fester in their embarrassment.

In the end, Azula is the one to keep things under wraps. Within a week, Fen had already walked in on Sokka and Zuko getting a little closer than usual. She clearly had her suspicions from then on, but she doesn’t say anything, especially when Azula plays dumb when she asks questions.

Another week later, one of the maids catches Zuko threading his fingers through Sokka’s hair as they wash up together. Neither of them notice her through the crack in the door to the baths, but Azula catches her later that evening telling some of the other staff about what she saw.

“Oh, really? What exactly did you see?” she’d asked, and the maids tensed at the sharpness of her voice.

“N-nothing, Princess.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Any other time, Azula might find it cumbersome to have to watch her brother’s back like this, but it had been a long time since she had a chance to scare some people straight. She manages to keep the rumors from spreading too far, making sure they promise to keep quiet on the matter while things get sorted, but she certainly chewed the two of them out for not being more careful.

Meanwhile, Zuko was humoring candidates for a new Ambassador, but he had to do it without raising suspicions and get Sokka another government position at the same time. He only enlists in Fen’s help when she interrupts them mid makeout session.

In the middle of the day.

In his office.

He didn’t know what he expected to happen.

She’d just stood in the doorway and stared while they stared back. There was no way Sokka could shimmy out of Zuko’s lap in time and make it look casual, so there they were, at a stalemate.

“Sir, today’s meeting has been pushed back an hour due to transit issues,” she’d said, as professional as ever, before exiting the room. 

The experience thoroughly scared them straight, and they managed to keep it quiet from then on. Never letting it slip out into the open, always keeping intimate moments to the privacy of the Fire Lord’s chambers, always being diligent about their behavior when around others. At least, Zuko and Sokka _thought_ they were doing a fine job keeping it a secret, but it wasn’t entirely lost on those who paid close enough attention to see the way they looked at each other during meetings. 

* * *

Nearly three months after their confessions, their friends arrive back on the Fire Nation homeland for a meeting, one where each nation can touch base and discuss their current situations specifically regarding any lasting affects due to the war. As a child, Zuko may have thought that six years would be enough time to at least get things sorted on paper, but he was wiser now. He has to work harder than that to make things right. He throws himself into the discussion so readily that he doesn’t catch they way Sokka is admiring his accountability and leadership, but also how handsome he looks when he gets serious.

By the time the meeting is over, everyone is more than happy to get going on their plans, but that doesn’t stop the gang from catching up with one another for some private time. As they usually do, they wind up at the palace garden where they sit under the tree and watch the turtle ducks swim around their little pond. 

“So, when were you going to tell us all you’re finally dating?” Katara asks after their usual banter subsides. Sokka and Zuko both splutter, barely managing to get completely useless words of protest out to deny it.

“I knew it!” Toph shrieks, throwing her hands up in the air in triumph.

“Um, no, what— what’re you guys talking about? You’re crazy,” Sokka squeaks, waving his hands at them all dismissively, but Toph just scoffs.

“You really have a hard time remembering that I can tell when you’re lying,” she cackles, and Sokka slumps his shoulders, “Besides, I could practically _feel_ you guys giving each other heart eyes from all the way across the table in there.”

Zuko groans and buries his face in his hands. “Sokka, we talked about this…”

Sokka bristles and swats at Zuko’s arm. “What do you mean this is all on me!? I can’t help that you look fucking hot when you take charge!”

Zuko just groans again and curls in on himself, hoping that some black hole will swallow them both up so they don’t need to hear how their friends are laughing hysterically. 

“You’re not joking?” Suki pipes up, her cheer plainly evident as she elbows Sokka in the ribs. With a horribly embarrassed whimper, Sokka shakes his head. “Damn, stud, you really went to the top of the ranks, huh?” she teases, and even though Sokka is mortified by it all, he can’t help laughing a bit.

“How long has this been going on?” Aang asks excitedly, and Azula is the one to break it to them that it started the day they left. Katara and Aang make a dramatic show of being offended by barely missing out on it, so Zuko turns to curl up into Sokka’s shoulder, like that would keep him hidden from his mounting embarrassment.

“Actually, it was the _night before_ you left,” Sokka corrects sheepishly while wrapping a supportive arm around Zuko’s shoulders, and now Aang and Katara aren’t just pretending to be upset. 

“You mean we were still here and you didn’t say _anything?_ ” Katara grouses while Aang flops back onto the ground beside her.

“You guys… we tried so hard to get you to confess,” he whines, throwing an arm over his eyes.

Sokka rolls his eyes and tosses a nearby pebble at the kid. “Well, whatever you guys did worked! Hooray!” he cheers sarcastically. “Besides, we couldn’t let it get out so quickly! What if Zuko and I got in trouble?”

“He’s the Fire Lord and you’re both best friends with the Avatar, I think you two can get away with anything you want,” Azula chimes in.

“From a moral standpoint, no, we can’t,” Zuko says as he finally peeks out from his hiding place, letting his hands fall to his lap.

“Ah, morals schmorals, who cares about the rules,” Toph adds with a wave of her hands.

“We care about the rules!” Sokka yelps, giving himself and Zuko a pat on the chest for emphasis. That just makes Toph snort and she calls them ‘losers’.

With a giggle, Aang sits back up and now he’s smiling, clearly happy that they’d finally figured things out. “So you’ll be getting a new Southern Water Tribe Ambassador?”

With a sigh, Zuko finally sits up straight and nods his head. “Yeah, you know anybody up for the task? I’m having trouble finding a good fit,” he grumbles.

Aang laughs. “I can ask around, sure,” he offers, and tosses a glance over to Katara, who agrees to help as well.

“I’d offer myself up as Ambassador, but I’ve got other things to take care of. And…” she trails off, giving Sokka a toothy grin, “If you’re going to be busy being the Consort to the Fire Lord, I’ll be next in line for Chief.”

Sokka doesn’t know what to process first. He still wasn’t sure if he really wanted to be Chief of the Water Tribe, so he was more than happy to hand that off to his sister, even if he’d spent his whole life thinking he’d end up there anyway. That leaves him floundering on the prospect of being married to Zuko. It makes his head spin a little, and Zuko is of no help.

“Wait, no, I haven’t proposed to him yet!” he says urgently, shaking his head furiously as he blushes down to his robes.

Toph just grins and crosses her arms. “Not _yet_.”

* * *

It’s another few months before the new Southern Water Tribe Ambassador arrives, a young lady who had worked closely with Chief Hakoda for the last several years. Even in that time, Zuko couldn’t find a new role to slot Sokka into, so he simply took him on as an assistant to himself, similarly to Fen. Sokka passed on his office to the new Ambassador, and they had a storage room closer to Zuko’s office refurbished for his use.

Zuko would’ve liked to have gotten him a more official position, but there was no room anywhere. Besides, Katara’s words echoed continuously in his mind, and if Sokka did become his Consort, it would be pointless to place him elsewhere. He doesn’t share this reasoning with Sokka, of course, else he might implode, but it crosses his mind frequently.

It’s another several months, after they’d considered themselves to be romantically involved for a year, that they go public with their relationship within the palace. They’d allowed rumors to spread through the staff, assuring Azula that she didn’t need to threaten — she insisted it was merely gentle discipline — anyone when they caught onto their intimacy. They decided they wouldn’t make a huge announcement to the Fire Nation, or world, as a whole just yet.

Sokka knew that day wouldn’t come till they would be married. The two of them hadn’t discussed such an arrangement any more seriously than light teasing to get the other party flustered, but Sokka was now making plans to propose, since they were going on almost two years of their relationship and it was showing no sign of going south. In fact, he felt like he fell in love with Zuko more and more every day.

Around the time of his twenty-third birthday, he made a trip to the South Pole to visit his family. He hadn’t been home in years, and part of him actually missed the bitter cold and nearly-barren landscape.

The village had bloomed immensely in the last several years, and was now a flourishing hub with various offshoots out across the surrounding land. And yet, everything was the same. It was still his old, familiar home. The children he’d been training to become warriors were growing up, and even kept his watchtower intact. He always knew that thing was a good idea.

Even though Sokka and Zuko kept their relationship secret for the first several months, Sokka had agreed that it would be alright if Iroh was the first to be told, just a few days after that first night. Zuko had sent a messenger hawk to Ba Sing Se, and they received a hugely supportive response. That was Zuko’s sign that this was a good choice to have made.

Sokka didn’t tell Hakoda till Katara and the others found out. He’d written a similar letter, and received an elated response, even with a little note from Gran-gran near the bottom. He often thinks that his father would’ve approved of Zuko the day he helped save them from the Boiling Rock.

It’s over a heaping bowl of stewed sea prunes with family that he hints at his plans.

“Hey, Aang, do you think you could help me with some carving tomorrow?” he asks as he watches Aang disinterestedly stir the contents of his bowl.

Aang arches a brow at him. “Uh, yeah, I guess I can do that,” he says, narrowing his eyes curiously at his request, “Why?”

Sokka purses his lips and glances down at his bowl, playing it nonchalant. “Oh, it’s just since you carved a betrothal charm for Katara, I wanted to get your advice.”

Everyone goes dead silent, leaving only the sound of the fire crackling between them. 

Sokka keeps a casual demeanor, even bringing another spoonful of stew to his mouth. When he does look back up at everyone around him, they’re each donning a different expression. His father looks dumbfounded if not proud; Katara and Gran-gran just look surprised; and Aang looks like he’s about to shoot right out of his seat.

“Oh, Spirits, Sokka! Are you really? Are you really gonna ask him!?”

With a grin, Sokka decides to play dumb. “Ask who what? You can’t be insinuating that I’m going to ask Zuko to marry me or something,” he jests, and is nearly bowled over by the excited air bender.

* * *

Sokka may be skilled when it comes to drawing, but carving is something he’s always had trouble with. It takes him a long time to come up with a design, and an even longer time to actually carve the damn thing. He starts over half a dozen times before he finally gets to a finished product he’s pleased with, only aided every now and then by Aang’s more delicate fingers.

He wanted to create a design that combined his Water Tribe heritage and that of the Fire Nation. In the end, he settled on the image of the sun breaking over waves on the sea. The three curls that appeared on the upper portion of the water bending symbol were shifted downward, leaving room for a semi circle and wispy rays of sunshine filling the upper portion. When it was finally finished, Katara happily helped him fix it to a choker.

Once it was complete in his hands, all he could do was stare at it. It made his heart swell with joy. He loved his partner, and he wanted to solidify that. He could only hope that Zuko would accept it.

(He knew he would.)

* * *

Arriving back at the docks of the Fire Nation Palace has him just as nervous as he’d been on his first day as Ambassador. Fen greets him at the shore and walks with him inside. It was nearing time for the Fire Festival once again, merely a few days away, and the palace grounds were bustling with people making plans and bringing in supplies. 

Part of Sokka was worried that now would be a bad time, that maybe he should wait till after the festival to propose when things were calmer, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his patience. Besides, there was something thrilling about the thought of seeing Zuko stand up in front of his people, addressing the nation with Sokka’s name around his neck. He clutches the small seal skin pouch containing the necklace gently in his pocket as they approach his office.

Zuko is sitting with Azula at his shoulder, poring over paperwork regarding the placement of guards during the festival. Zuko had finally appointed her a position as a General to the army. Many officials seemed hesitant about his decision, but Azula had a history of commanding soldiers, even if it was chaotic. She has a keen mind, and with knowledge of the systems across various nations and their inner workings, she was the perfect candidate to keep soldiers and guards alike in line. For the Fire Festival, he was putting her in charge of the guards on duty.

Sokka gently clears his throat as he enters the room, and the siblings look up to meet him. The way Zuko smiles makes Sokka’s heart flutter, and they meet each other halfway through the room in a tight embrace.

“Did you miss me?” Sokka teases before planting a firm kiss on Zuko’s cheek.

Zuko just rolls his eyes and gives him a little thump on the back. “Shut up.” 

That was a yes.

“How much work do you have left to do?” Sokka asks as they separate, but he doesn’t entirely let go. He weaves an arm around Zuko’s waist and leads him back toward the desk.

Zuko breathes in through his teeth. “A bit… we’re still sorting out the guards. Remember last year when that group of kids managed to scale one of the palace walls?”

Sokka barks out a laugh and nods his head. “The ones who were convinced you had a dragon in here somewhere? How could I forget.”

“We just don’t want to spread them too thin," Azula sighs as she nudges some circular wooden chips around the paper map, trying to find the best placements.

Sokka hums curiously and, reluctantly, lets go of Zuko to move closer. “Have you thought about keeping a group of guards on a constant rotation around the perimeter?” he suggests, tapping on his chin as he thinks.

When he doesn’t get an immediate response, he glances up at them. Azula is pinching the bridge of her nose, and Zuko has his eyes shut and head tilted back.

“We’re idiots,” the Fire Lord sighs, and Sokka snorts.

“You forgot people can walk around, huh?”

“Listen, we’re… very tired,” Zuko sighs, but he’s smiling when he meets his boyfriend’s gaze.

Sokka snickers, giving him a gentle pat on the shoulder. “I know, darling, I know.”

* * *

Determined to take a load of work off both Zuko’s and Azula’s plates, Sokka stays up late with the both of them and a myriad of other staff members to get through the slog of planning. In the end, he nearly forgets about his betrothal necklace, and safely stashes it away in his clothes that night as they settle in for bed.

“I never asked, did you travel back safely?” Zuko murmurs as he climbs into bed. 

Sokka hums and nods his head. “I did, I did. It was smooth sailing,” he says, waving a hand out in front of him to demonstrate. 

Zuko laughs quietly, situating himself on his side and propping his head up on his elbow. “How’s your father?”

“Oh, good. Great, really. The Water Tribe has really grown lately,” he chuckles, then sighs as he slips down under the blankets even more, “It was good to go back.”

Zuko hums thoughtfully, reaching out with his other hand to brush some of Sokka’s hair behind his ear. Sokka shuts his eyes and leans into the touch, and he imagines he must be smiling like a doofus because Zuko tugs gently on his earlobe and chuckles.

“What’re you laughing at?” Sokka asks as he opens one eye to peek up at him.

“Your idiot face, that’s what,” Zuko says with a grin, and Sokka lets out a dramatic gasp, even clutching his chest with one hand.

“Ouch, flame boy, that hurt!”

Zuko just huffs and rolls his eyes, gently kicking at Sokka’s feet under the sheets. “Oh, shut up.”

Sokka decidedly does not want to do that, so he plays it up. He wails, rolling onto his back and draping an arm dramatically across his face. “You’ve wounded me so horribly, Zuko! I can’t believe you would insult me like this!” he cries, even whipping up some fake sniffles.

Beside him, Zuko snorts and gives his shoulder a little shove. “Spirits, shut up, you’re so embarrassing,” he groans, but Sokka can still hear the smile in his voice.

“Just you try to make me shut up,” Sokka quips as he peeks out from under his arm.

Zuko arches a brow at him. “Is that a challenge?” he asks, shimmying closer till he’s leaning over Sokka.

Sokka’s heart leaps into his throat, but he hides it behind a grin. “Maybe it is.”

“Hmm, then I accept,” Zuko hums. He reaches up and gently pulls Sokka’s arm away from his face, letting it fall softly against the pillows. He props himself up with an arm on either side of Sokka’s head, and _wow_ , he really missed Zuko over the last two weeks he was away. “I think I know just the thing to keep you quiet.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Sokka says, but all of his sarcastic bite is gone. He’s too caught up in the way Zuko’s lips are curled into a crooked grin, and the way his eyes crinkle at the corners to give way to his amusement, but mostly he’s caught up in how intense his gaze is. In the dim light of the room, his pupils are blown wide, leaving a slim band of amber around them, like an eclipse. It's unwavering, like he's trying to re-memorize every detail of his boyfriend's face. There’s the slightest bit of color high in his cheeks, and when his eyes flick down to Sokka’s lips for a moment, butterflies set off wildly in his stomach.

Meanwhile, Zuko is reveling in how quickly he can get Sokka to fall apart just from a few words and a well placed smile. It’s become a bit of a game for him, and over the last two years, he’s gotten very good at finding his weaknesses. The only problem is, he has weaknesses of his own, and Sokka is hitting several of them right now. 

His hair was starting to get long again, despite having it trimmed just a couple months prior, and it spreads out beautifully across the ruby red sheets, framing his face in a dark halo. And while his usual sharp, toothy smiles are charming and handsome, Zuko loves catching him off guard, wide eyed and innocent. Right now, his eyes are bright and sparkling in the low light of the moon, so vibrant against his dark complexion. He felt so lucky to wake up to those eyes every morning.

They both have the same thought.

_‘Spirits, I missed him so much.’_

Without further ado, Zuko closes the short distance between them and presses his lips firmly to Sokka’s. He hums happily beneath Zuko, and reaches upward to cradle his face between both hands. Sokka runs his thumbs gently across Zuko’s cheekbones, sighing pleasantly at the warmth Zuko emanates from his body. That was one thing Sokka thought about nearly every night while he was in the South Pole, how he would’ve loved to have his personal heated blanket that was Zuko with him.

The thought of him and Zuko curling up in one of his fur sleeping bags makes him giggle against his boyfriend’s lips, and Zuko smiles in return.

“I thought I was trying to shut you up,” Zuko mumbles, half muffled against Sokka’s lips as he tilts his head to deepen it. A happy thrill goes down his spine when Sokka sighs against his mouth in response, going a little more limp against the mattress.

“Mm, you were,” Sokka mutters, before wrapping his arms around Zuko’s neck and yanking him down closer, pressing their bodies flush together to chase more of that warmth.

They absolutely will not want to get out of bed tomorrow.

* * *

The next couple days go by in a flash and Sokka is starting to panic about his proposal.

He’d asked his father for advice, and he’d said to just do it when it felt natural. Don’t rush it, don’t force it, and he didn’t need to make an elaborate plan. Aang made a bit of a show of his proposal to Katara earlier in the year, even roping Momo into it for a little fun flare. While Sokka loved being grandiose at times, he wanted it to be more intimate, and not something that could topple over and make himself look like a fool.

He also knew doing it in front of a crowd wouldn’t suit the occasion, because while Zuko wasn’t the self-conscious teenager he once was, he still often didn’t enjoy having attention placed on himself. It felt more right to keep it quiet, to have it be a surprise, both to Zuko and everyone around them.

All he knew he needed to do first was speak to Azula and, most importantly, to Iroh. He felt a little silly going to Zuko’s father figure, since he knew it wasn’t really necessary to get his permission to propose, but it felt right. Iroh cares deeply for his nephew, and Zuko cares deeply for his Uncle. It only felt proper to give a heads up.

In the middle of the day, around lunchtime when everyone takes a break from the hustle and bustle of setting up tents and accounting for supplies, Sokka pulls Iroh into a secluded corner of the courtyard.

“What can I do for you, Sokka?” he asks cheerfully, though laced with curiosity.

“I wanted to, uh, give you a heads up, I guess,” Sokka whispers with a shrug before digging the pouch out of his pocket. Iroh glances down at it and cocks his head. Only when Sokka carefully pulls out the necklace does he gasp, clutching his hands to his chest. The reaction makes Sokka laugh softly. “I’m going to propose to Zuko.”

“Well, you have my blessing, if that’s what you’re looking for!” laughs Iroh, then gently reaches out his hands toward the charm. “May I?”

Sokka gladly hands the necklace over to him, giving a quick glance around to make sure nobody is coming near. Iroh holds it up to eye level, letting it dangle in the air. It glints beautifully in the sunlight, and Iroh beams up at it.

“It’s beautiful… you made it yourself?”

Sokka nods his head. “Yeah. Do you… d’you think he’ll like it?”

“Like it?” Iroh barks before carefully laying the necklace back in Sokka’s hand, “My nephew would love any betrothal necklace you presented him with. But I will say, this one is exceptional.”

Sokka smiles brightly, looking down at his handiwork one last time before stowing it away again. “Thank you,” he hums, and Iroh places a firm hand on his shoulder.

“I am happy for you both,” he says, his eyes crinkling at the corners. That’s all the support Sokka needs.

When they meet back up with the others, Zuko doesn’t comment on their absence, instead being far too busy making tea for the staff. He shoots Sokka a bright, childlike smile when he nearly spills water all over himself, and Sokka thinks he couldn’t be more in love.

As the day before the festival nears its end, Sokka knows he has to act now if he doesn’t want to have to wait any longer. It’s another late night of last minute prepping, but Sokka doesn’t rush anyone. Instead, while Zuko is consulting with vendors, he pulls Azula aside.

“I, um, wanted to tell you something,” he whispers when she gives him a curious glance.

She arches a brow at him. “Okay…?” she murmurs, folding her arms across her chest.

Sokka glances past her to see Zuko’s back turned to them, chattering away with the staff. There was no way he’d notice they were missing right now.

Quietly and carefully, Sokka pulls the seal skin pouch from his pocket and opens it just enough to lift the betrothal charm into the light. Azula glances down at it and furrows her brow, then glances up at Sokka as what he’s suggesting sinks in. Her mouth falls open when it clicks, and Sokka presses a finger to his lips.

“Yes, I’m going to propose,” he whispers, and she bites back her excitement so as not to draw attention to them as Sokka quickly tucks the necklace away again.

“When?” she asks, glancing over at Zuko for a moment to see him still preoccupied.

“Tonight, I think,” Sokka admits with a nervous smile, “I meant to earlier, but… things were so busy. I didn’t even tell Iroh till today.”

“You want to do it before tomorrow, though,” she hums in understanding, and Sokka doesn’t think he’s ever seen her smile so big before. 

Before they can converse more, Zuko calls Azula back to go over guard placement one last time, and thankfully doesn’t ask what they were talking about in their little corner. They wrap things up late into the night, and Zuko leans heavily into Sokka as they head back to their bedroom to crash. 

“You should at least sleep in a little bit so you’re not totally wiped before your speech,” Sokka suggests as he helps Zuko get out of his robes, leaving him in his undershirt.

“But I need to help keep things on track in the morning,” he huffs while carefully letting his hair down. He keeps it cut just to his collarbones now, and he runs his fingers through it absently to get out any tangles.

Sokka sighs and smiles at his lover. “I know you want to, but you need to take care of yourself,” he murmurs as he fingers the pouch in his pocket nervously. When Zuko has his back turned to him, he takes it out and quickly hides it behind his back so he can slip the necklace out into his palm.

“I’ll take a nap, then,” he says as he reaches his dresser drawers to get out his sleepwear, but he pauses with his hand on the knob. Instead, he eyes Sokka curiously, seeing as he hasn’t even taken off his shoes yet, let alone begin getting undressed. “You coming to bed?” he asks, and Sokka smiles.

Now his nerves were really bubbling in his stomach. This is something he wanted so badly, something they both wanted so badly, and he’d never forgive himself if he fucked it up. It was just that this thing, this thing that was a little joke between friends, this thing that was a jest to make the other smile and blush, this thing that was always a playful, hypothetical possibility was finally coming true.

Sokka swallows loudly, and steps forward.

“Zuko, I, uh,” he stammers, and Zuko just watches him patiently, if not a little nervously. Sokka steps closer, till they’re one stride apart, and takes a deep breath. “I… wanted to ask you something.” 

Zuko stares, then blinks. “Oh… okay,” he murmurs, eyes flicking down to where Sokka’s hands are still clasped behind his back.

Sokka glances down with a breathless chuckle. “I don't know why I’m so nervous,” he admits out loud. His hands are shaking a bit, but he carefully brings them forward, making sure not to drop his precious gift. The charm glints softly in the candlelight of the room, the dark blue band almost looking black. 

Finally, Zuko follows his gaze downward, and he goes stock still. Somehow his mind is racing and blissfully blank at the same time. While he may not be familiar with all Water Tribe customs, this was one he knew in an instant. He never expected to receive such an item from Sokka, but the prospect suddenly makes him feel giddy.

When he finally gets his bearings back, he looks up at Sokka. Their eyes meet, and Sokka smiles softly. His nerves show on his face, but it’s alongside hope, love, adoration, everything that comes with being wholly infatuated with another person. Zuko hopes he looks just the same.

“Zuko, I…” he starts, then pauses on another breathless laugh. He takes in a deep breath and holds up the charm to his companion. “I wanted to know if you would, uh… if you would marry me.”


	6. You're the last piece of my life

They have the wedding on the Winter Solstice at the Fire Nation palace. They would’ve liked to have kept the ceremony small, just close family and friends, but news of their engagement spread quickly across the map, mostly due to Aang’s excitement. In the end, it became a rather large affair where even Fire Nation citizens could observe.

Some conservatives were opposed to the marriage, not only because it was between two men, but because it was out of love rather than political gain. Zuko often recalled his mother and father, how their marriage was arranged for political purposes like many before them. He never quite understood why that was the case as a child. As an adult he can grasp the concept when it’s approached from certain viewpoints, but why would he want to marry anyone he doesn’t love dearly?

Sokka blubbers like a baby turtle seal when they see each other for the first time at the ceremony, he can barely speak. Zuko can’t be one to talk, though, because he has to keep taking deep breaths so he doesn’t turn into a mess as well. He really couldn’t be happier, and he barely even notices the hundreds of eyes on them.

Sokka doesn’t let go of him for the rest of the day. He was Zuko’s husband, and Zuko was his. Every time he remembered it, he tugged Zuko close and planted a loud kiss to his cheek, his temple, his lips, anywhere he could. It embarrasses Zuko at first, but he begins to easily fall into them. He’d been trying to keep a professional demeanor throughout the reception, graciously accepting congratulations from government officials and diplomats, but the facade was giving way and he only wanted to display how happy he was. Sokka thinks it suits him fabulously.

Becoming the Fire Lord’s Consort doesn’t bring much change to Sokka’s workload, but it now runs more closely alongside the Fire Lord rather than that of an assistant. Sokka already worked so closely with Zuko that it didn’t feel all too different, but he certainly enjoyed getting to, as he called it, “entertain” important guests before Zuko arrived.

They were already a happy family, but it felt much more solid now. They weren't going anywhere anytime soon.

* * *

“Say hi to Uncle Sokka!”

The year old boy babbles happily and reaches out to Sokka from Katara’s arms.

“Aw, he missed me!” Sokka cheers as he takes the infant, “It’s nice to see you again, Bumi.”

Bumi gives another hearty babble and smiles up at his Uncle, grabbing at the fur trim of his shirt.

Behind them, Appa lets out a soft grunt. Sokka laughs and moves closer to the bison, giving his forehead a gentle pat. “Don’t worry, buddy, I missed you, too.” Appa rumbles happily. “How was the trip?” he asks as Aang grabs their bag from the saddle.

“As good as ever,” Katara says with a smile. 

“He traveled okay?” Sokka asks as he jostles Bumi gently in his arms. The movement makes the baby giggle, and Sokka can’t suppress his smile.

“He did!” Aang says happily, “Only got a little fussy yesterday when the winds were bad, but he was good and bundled up.”

Sokka chuckles, then glances back down at the little boy. “Well, you’ll be nice and warm here!” he coos, and Bumi squeaks in response.

Sokka had nearly cried when he learned he was going to be an uncle. It was a bit of a surprise, mostly because Aang and Katara were hesitant to start raising a family. They knew they wanted to have children eventually, but it was a matter of making sure the world was in order before Aang decided to settle down. Well, he knew he never would fully settle down, being the Avatar as well as the last link to the air benders, but he wanted to be able to give as much time as he could to his children. 

They sent out news the day Bumi was born, and all of their friends flocked to the South Pole to meet the new addition to the family. Azula even insisted that Zuko go visit, even just for a few days, and she kept watch on the Fire Nation while they were gone. Little Bumi looked so small in Zuko’s arms, and he curled up close to his chest, chasing the warmth from the fire bender. A small spark of desire flared in Sokka’s chest as he watched, but he didn’t mention it.

“Zuko’s in a meeting right now, but I told him to meet us afterward,” Sokka explains as he leads them to their sleeping quarters, only stopping whenever Bumi stares curiously and reaches out to any person, object, or image they walk by. He seemed to be born with a natural curiosity and outgoing nature, which made him very popular with all the palace staff they encountered.

“Is this the first real vacation he’s taken since becoming Fire Lord?” Aang asks with a smirk. They all knew Zuko worked himself down to the bone, but it hadn’t really clicked till they learned he didn’t even take a proper honeymoon with Sokka. They simply took the day after their wedding off, but remained in the palace. Sokka was more than happy to indulge him in that, since he knew more than anyone how much Zuko had on his plate at any given moment, but the man needed a break.

“Yup, as far as I’m aware,” Sokka says with a roll of his eyes, “It’s a miracle he hasn’t keeled over.”

“Tell me about it,” Katara laughs, “If anyone needs a beach holiday, it’s Zuko.”

Sokka hadn’t set foot back on Ember Island since they hid away in Zuko’s summer home before Sozin’s Comet. As far as he knew, Zuko hadn’t either. In the last year, Sokka had taken it upon himself to get the summer home back in working order. A little dust and decay from sitting empty for years would’ve been manageable on its own, but Zuko and Aang had done a number on it in their last scuffle. Nothing the repairmen couldn’t handle, but they seemed a little shocked by the state of the place when they arrived, as indicated by their reports. Sokka had surprised Zuko with the news a few months prior, when it was nearly done being refurbished and decorated.

That was what finally made Zuko cave in and take the vacation his mind and body so desperately needed. They were to stay on Ember Island for five days. There would be no work, no Fire Lord duties, only sun, sand, and sea. Sokka had even thought ahead and reserved tickets to an Ember Island Player’s show, even if they were just going to make fun of them the whole time.

When Zuko’s meeting finally ends, he’s all too happy to find his friends in their sleeping quarters. “Oh, I’ve been waiting to say hi to you again,” he coos at Bumi when Sokka hands him over. The infant giggles and reaches up to grab at strands of Zuko’s hair.

“You ready to lay around all day tomorrow?” Aang asks as he claps Zuko on the shoulder.

Zuko sighs heavily, the smallest smile tugging at his lips. “I guess so,” he murmurs, and Aang just rolls his eyes.

“Listen, I know you’re Fire Lord and you’re really busy and blah blah blah, but you gotta relax sometimes.”

Again, Zuko huffs. “I know, I know, I just…”

He’s already told Sokka countless times that he’s nervous to go. What if something happens at the palace? What if some big news breaks the moment he leaves and he’s not around to take care of it? What if paperwork stacks up to the ceiling in his office and he’ll never catch up?

“Zuko, we’ve already worked way ahead in advance to make sure everything is okay while you’re gone,” Sokka assures, “And you know Azula will keep the wheels turning, you’ve left her in charge before.”

Zuko sighs and shuts his eyes. “You’re right,” he murmurs. His attention is drawn back to them when Bumi tugs gently at his hair. He’s got it threaded between his fingers, and he looks incredibly focused on trying to bring them to his mouth. Zuko humors him and leans his head down, till the ends tickle his cheeks, and he squeals happily.

* * *

By the time their five day vacation came to an end, nobody could have guessed that Zuko was hesitant to go. He dragged his feet as he climbed back into Appa’s saddle, gazing longingly at the sparkling blue water and the sun-warm sand. Sokka promised him they’d come back again soon. 

It couldn’t have been better for them to get some time off, because, surprise, being well rested really makes work go much more efficiently. 

They were also exceptionally happy to spend time with their baby nephew. It really made Zuko cherish his relationship with Iroh even more, because now he could relate. He understood just how special that sort of bond could be from the perspective of the elder. 

It also brought upon thoughts of having his own children. He’d never really thought about it before, always caught up in work, always thinking about his duties and not about settling down. Mostly because he knew, even now married to Sokka and being expected to start a family of sorts, he would be in his position as Fire Lord for years to come. But now, seeing Aang and Katara with their little one made him yearn for something similar. He wanted to raise a child like them, to raise them in the way they should be.

He wanted to raise a child to lay the last brick and prove he’s nothing like his father.

There were days he never even had a shadow of a thought about Ozai, locked away in his prison cell. He got occasional updates on his status, but he made no effort to visit him. He’d given up after a dozen or so times of trying to get information about his mother out of him. He had yet to even tell Ozai he’d gotten married, but part of him hoped he knew, and realized that Zuko wasn’t concerned with his feelings on the matter in any regard.

It was Zuko’s own silent vindication that he had created his own happiness and Ozai had no say in it.

* * *

It’s a foggy early morning, and Zuko does not want to get out of bed. It’s been a week and he still misses the warmth and bright sunshine of Ember Island. In an attempt to will himself back there, he squeezes his eyes shut and shimmies closer to Sokka under their blankets. Maybe if he thinks hard enough, he’ll wake up back there and get to walk along the beach.

“Hm, good morning, sunshine,” Sokka murmurs softly. Zuko grumbles. For some reason, Sokka is sitting up, so Zuko’s got himself curled up against his legs, nuzzling his nose against his hip. Sokka laughs. “Not quite ready to get up, huh?”

Zuko shakes his head, but he does tilt back and open one eye to look at his husband. “How long have you been up?” he asks, muffled against Sokka’s thigh.

“Not long,” he sighs. He reaches down to run his fingers through Zuko’s hair, who leans up into the touch with a pleased hum. “Was thinking.”

“About what?” Zuko asks before pressing a soft kiss to the bare strip of skin below Sokka’s shirt.

The affection makes Sokka chuckle, but it falls off quickly. “I was thinking about Bumi.”

Zuko smiles. “He’s gonna be a good kid when he gets older,” he murmurs, but otherwise keeps quiet, letting Sokka get his thoughts out.

“I was… thinking about what it must be like to raise a family.” His hand stills in Zuko’s hair, and he fiddles with the hem of the sheets in the other. He’s nervous bringing it up. “And… I— I don’t know. D’you ever wanna have kids?” The question comes out fast and a little jumbled, and Zuko’s drowsy mind barely puts it together.

He blinks, then shifts back so he can properly look up at Sokka. “I, uh…” he trails off.

Sokka stammers and waves a hand between them. “It’s okay if you don’t, I just… I wanted to ask, I guess, because, you know, we never really talk about it,” he rambles, chewing his lip when he pauses long enough, “I just— I guess— I never really thought about having kids, you know? I assumed I would eventually one day, maybe one or two, but I kind of forgot about it.”

Zuko hates that he’s just staring up at his husband, mouth half open like a fish, but he can’t get any words out.

“And I mean, again, we don’t have to if you don’t want to. Like, this is a two way road here,” he says with a chuckle, even if it’s strained. “And I’m all about adoption if you don’t, you know, want to, uh— anyway, I think I want to have kids, I just—.”

Finally Zuko manages to blurt out, “Stop.” Sokka snaps his mouth shut and fists his hand in the sheets. The other is still threaded through Zuko’s hair, cradling the back of his head. “Sokka, it’s okay,” he murmurs, and sits up. He takes Sokka’s hand in his own and squeezes it gently and smiles. “You really got worked up there,” he chuckles.

Sokka huffs and pouts a little. “Well, you weren’t saying anything,” he whines.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Zuko hums amusedly, “Still waking up a bit.”

Sokka at least deflates a little, the tension no longer visible in his shoulders. He’s still staring down at the sheets, though, now picking at a loose thread.

Zuko sighs. “I’ve been thinking about it, too,” he admits, and smiles when Sokka looks up at him with wide, excited eyes. 

* * *

They both knew it took a lot of work to prepare for a child, but they didn’t realize it would be this much, and they didn’t even have a baby yet. Zuko had to reevaluate his schedule, examine the workloads for his various employees and calculate if he’d need to hire more, and they had to start planning for a new bedroom. Zuko’s childhood room was available at least, having been used as a guest room of sorts for when friends and family visited, and could be easily remodeled. 

They wanted to keep their plans on the down low for now, so the only people they spoke to about it were Hakoda and Iroh. They’d each started correspondence asking about any advice they could give about raising a child, and they were more than eager to supply that information. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but both men promised it would come naturally once they had the child in their arms.

It was all so daunting, and they were just planning to adopt.

That was a long process on its own, but the adoption agency on the homeland was more than honored to have the Fire Lord and his Consort visiting their facility. 

Zuko was sad to say that, because of the war, there was an influx of orphaned children that were still struggling to get their footing. He did his best to create legislation that required they get fair treatment and care, but a few dozen children and teenagers were still living at the facility. 

On the bright side, if you could call it that, the youngest children there were around six years old. That was a sign that there’s wasn’t a constant flow of infants and children coming into their care, and more of the older ones were moving out on their own every day. Every once in a while they got a family coming in to adopt, but it was petering out as people began to settle down again. He could only hope that they would find their own way in life, or as families began to prosper again, they would consider taking on another child.

“Oh, we do have one very young girl, must not even be a year old,” one of the fosters explains as they watch some of the young children play in their private courtyard, “She was dropped off here about a week ago, left on our stoop with a note tucked into her blanket.”

_‘Please take care of my daughter, we cannot keep her.  
_ _I am only seventeen years old, my boyfriend is eighteen.  
_ _Our families kicked us out.  
_ _We are leaving for the Earth Kingdom to start fresh.  
_ _Her name is Izumi.  
_ _Tell her I love her.’_

It breaks their hearts. The writing is messy, clearly made in haste. 

The little girl is so, so small. When they meet her, she’s fast asleep in her swaddle. She has a small tuft of dark brown hair on her head that stands up on end, a stark contrast to her light complexion.

They fall in love with her immediately.

It takes a while, but they visit several times over the next few months to get acquainted with the infant. After a few visits, it even seems like Izumi starts to recognize them. That or, like Bumi, she just wants to chase Zuko’s natural warmth and curls in close to his chest. Only after many supervised visits, a lot of paperwork, and a few quick judgements of the household — which was very easy to approve of, being the Fire Nation Palace and perfectly equipped to provide for a child — they were granted their adoption.

It’s hectic right off the bat, but the two new fathers couldn’t be happier. 

Much like when Bumi was born, they send out letters to all of their friends to inform them all of the newest member of the family. She’s shyer than Bumi, but slowly comes out of her shell when she becomes accustomed to everyone saying hello. They all find it very amusing when she latches onto one of Toph’s fingers and doesn’t let go for almost half an hour.

“I can tell you she is very healthy,” Toph assures them, “She’s got a lot of strength, this little goober.”

* * *

“Izumi, sweetheart, could you grab me that last tomato next to Dada?”

“Okay!” Izumi’s little feet patter along the tiled floor of the palace kitchen, where the small family had taken over a corner to make a personal dinner. She had insisted on having grilled tomatoes and fish, but whined and whined until Zuko amusedly told the kitchen staff that they wouldn’t need to cook for them tonight, as they would be doing it themselves.

Zuko hands her the tomato from off the counter, and she happily carries it back over to Sokka.

“Thank you, my dear,” Sokka coos as he gently takes the vegetable and kisses the top of her head. She giggles and stands up on her toes to watch Sokka slice it alongside the others, being careful to keep her fingers away from the knife like her fathers had told her to.

She was four years old now, and growing like a bean sprout. She would soon begin attending school. They almost couldn’t believe so much time had gone by, and they almost wish it hadn’t, but nothing was more amazing than watching their little girl grow up.

“What tea should I make to go with our lovely meal here?” Zuko asks playfully as he taps his chin. 

Sokka just giggles at him, and Izumi spins around to face her father. “Jasmine!”

Zuko smiles down at her. “Jasmine, it is. An excellent choice,” he coos, and she lets out an excited squeal.

“I wanna do the leafs!”

“Remember, darling, it’s _leaves_.”

Sokka watches the two of them with a smile. The fish was nearly done searing and the tomatoes were getting nice and hot. Once they get the smallest bit of char on one side, he slips their portions onto various plates and sets them on the nearby counter, where they’d situated a few random stools and chairs for them to use. 

Izumi is watching Zuko fire bend their tea in awe. It was already clear to them that she was a fire bender, having accidentally created a few small sparks and flames when she got overly excited or emotional, and she couldn’t wait to start learning more. She kept insisting it was fire magic, and Sokka couldn’t help being amused by how similar she sounded to him when he was a kid, insisting that Katara played with magic water. Well, Izumi at least sounded way more excited while he was just grumpy all the time.

It wasn’t often they got to cook for themselves, but it was always a treat when they had a little private meal like this. Izumi loved watching them cook, and she already spent lots of time watching the cooks prepare meals for them. 

“Fish, fish, fish, fish,” she chants softly as Sokka pulls apart some of the flesh into more manageable pieces.

“Careful, sweetheart, it’s still a little hot,” he warns as he also slices up the tomatoes.

“Careful, careful,” she echoes softly, and both her parents chuckle. When she picks up her first bite, she gently blows on it like she had been shown, before popping it into a mouth. She lets out a happy hum and wiggles in her seat before taking another, blowing on it, and eating it. Sokka and Zuko dig in alongside her. It was a simple meal, but even simple foods taste better when they’re homemade.

It’s when they’re washing up their dishes that they get a visitor.

“There you all are,” Azula huffs as she enters the kitchen.

It’s clear she has some information to relay to Zuko, but it must be of little importance based on how Azula’s attention shifts directly to Izumi.

“Auntie Zula!” the little girl shouts before hurrying over, hands covered in soap bubbles from the sink.

“Well, hello, Zumi,” she says with a chuckle before squatting down to get to her eye level, “Did you help your fathers cook dinner?”

She nods her head enthusiastically. “I did the leafs in the tea!”

Azula _oohs_ and _aahs_. “That is very good, young lady. I bet it was the best tea ever made,” she coos, giving Izumi a little tickle under her chin. 

The little girl giggles and hurries back over to Zuko, tugging on the hem of his robes. “Can I go play with Auntie Zula?”

“You’ll have to ask Auntie Zula if she can play with you first,” he says warmly, quickly taking a moment to wipe the soap off her hands with a damp towel. He glances up at Azula to see if she’s alright with such an arrangement.

“I would love to play with you, Zumi,” she says softly as she stands up. Izumi claps her hands together happily, and hurries back to her Aunt’s side. Azula takes one of her hands and gives it a gentle squeeze before looking back up at the two men. “There’s some paperwork pertaining to some petitions I left on your desk, Zuko. Just give it a read over when you get a chance.”

Zuko nods his head in understanding before giving Izumi a little wave as they head back out into the palace.

Once he knows they’re out of earshot, Sokka asks, “Did you ever expect Azula to be so good with kids?”

Zuko just sighs around a smile and shakes his head. “No, but I’m not complaining.”

Sokka snorts. “I’m not either. I’m glad Izumi likes spending time with her.”

They spend the next few minutes washing their dishes, pots, and pans and putting them away, making sure they leave the kitchen just as clean as it had been when they arrived, despite the staff insisting they would take care of it. With everything put away, they take a moment to finish the last of the tea and sit in a comfortable silence. 

It gives Zuko a little time to think. He never thought he’d love being a father as much as he does. Part of him had always been afraid he’d turn into Ozai in that regard. He was _still_ afraid he’d slip into that trend of greed, hungry for power and ultimate rule, no matter how often he told himself otherwise. It was going on seventeen years of his rule with no indication that he was going to stumble down that path, but it still cropped up every now and then, a silent fear always tickling the back of his mind.

He was worried his blood was tainted, so to speak. That his father’s genes would be passed through him, and only bring more harm to the world. An endless cycle of hatred and fear and anger. That’s why he had been so keen on adoption rather than carrying a child. Not to mention, bearing a child was a taxing ordeal on its own. Even when Sokka and his friends assured him he was not like his father and never would be, it still ate at him. He tried to focus on his mother, on his Uncle, on his sister, on the good blood in his family.

It helped to lessen the fear as the years passed, and did so more and more now that they had Izumi in their lives. Even more so than before, he wanted to make the world a safe, prosperous place, for his daughter. He wanted to hand over the nation to her in a better state than it had been handed to him. He was so determined that he knew, deep down, he would never stoop to the levels of his forefathers. 

Izumi was a bright spot of light in their lives. They were already very happy, completely content in living their lives as they were. They didn’t particularly feel as though something was missing, but their daughter was an extra spot of color that made the bigger picture all the more clear. If Zuko was being honest, he wanted to bring more of that color into the world.

“Sokka, do you ever think about having another child?” he asks, breaking the silence between them. 

Sokka is a little caught off guard by the sudden question, but is quickly biting back a smile. “Well, yeah, I do sometimes,” he admits as he pours the last dregs of the tea into his cup.

Zuko hums thoughtfully. It feels like his stomach is in his throat. “I… think I want to try,” he murmurs, and Sokka chuckles.

“Absolutely, I’d love to see if there’s another little tyke we can take in,” he says as he swirls the tea in his cup, “I can try contacting the same foster facility, see if they have anyone in need of a home. We could—.”

“No,” Zuko cuts him off, and Sokka cocks his head curiously at him.

“Oh… okay, well, we could try finding another facility. Maybe one off the homeland?” he suggests, trying to figure out what Zuko is getting at. But again, Zuko shakes his head, so Sokka bites his tongue. Sometimes Zuko just needs a little time to get his words strung together properly, so he waits patiently.

It takes a minute or two, but Zuko finally takes a deep breath. “I… don’t want to adopt,” he mutters, and Sokka just stares at him. He blinks. Zuko looks up sheepishly and fiddles with his cup of tea. “I… think I want to have _your_ child, Sokka.”

He blinks again.

For a moment, Zuko thinks this was a bad idea, that maybe Sokka didn’t want to do such a thing. He knows it’s a stupid fear, but it leaves his stomach in knots nonetheless. He watches with bated breath as Sokka sets his cup back down. The gears are visibly turning in his head.

He’s staring at his husband with a mixture of awe, excitement, and surprise. He’s perplexed, really, because he never expected Zuko to have a desire like this, but Sokka also takes it as an incredibly good sign. Zuko has confided in him about his fears before, about how he’ll only bring more bad blood into the world, but it seems now he’s finally learned and accepted that isn’t true.

“You want… to bear a child?” Sokka finally asks, voice low. Zuko nods his head, and Sokka’s smile grows a little bigger. “You want to bear _my_ child?” he presses. Zuko nods his head again, and Sokka’s smile grows even bigger. He can no longer contain himself.

With an excited shout he jumps up out of his seat and yanks Zuko up by the shoulders to pull him into a tight hug. It nearly knocks the wind out of the Fire Lord, and he scrambles to gather up his scattered mind.

“Oh, Zuko, I would love to. I would love to have another child with you,” Sokka murmurs against his shoulder, and Zuko finally relaxes. He wraps his arms tight around Sokka. He presses a kiss to his jaw and hums happily, swaying gently together in the middle of the palace kitchen. 

* * *

With the experience of one child tucked in their back pocket, it takes a little less planning to work around a second one. Although now they have to prepare for a pregnancy as well. As they did before they adopted Izumi, the only people they notify of their plans are Hakoda, Iroh, Azula, and now Fen to help aid in some of the accommodations. 

Their first order of business is planning when to conceive the child so their birth doesn’t interfere with any important dates. Summers in the Fire Nation are the busiest time of year, mostly due to the Fire Festival and an influx of tourists, so they aim for winter.

So, their sights are set for the tail end of spring.

They carve out an evening for themselves, and Sokka can hardly keep his hands and eyes off Zuko.

Zuko has never looked more vulnerable and more sure of himself at the same time. He’s exposing himself completely to Sokka, but he’s confident in his choice. Even if the result means he’s exhausted, compromised, much more delicate than normal, he’s not backing out. In fact, Sokka thinks he might be more nervous than his husband is. 

His hands shake when he slips off Zuko’s robes, to the point where Zuko takes them gently in his own.

“Don’t be nervous, Sokka,” he whispers. He kisses him, threading their fingers together to keep them both grounded. “I’m not afraid.”

* * *

Then, they waited.

It wouldn’t be long till they found out if Zuko was carrying or not, but the wait was agonizing nonetheless. They see a practitioner a month later, and get the surest confirmation they can receive.

It doesn’t fully set in for another few weeks when Zuko misses his period, shortly followed by a bout of nausea. 

Sokka blubbers like a baby.

* * *

They don’t tell anyone outside of their small circle of four until he’s just passed the three month mark. He’s barely beginning to show, just the slightest bump when he strips down, but he’s far enough along that there’s no point in keeping it a secret any longer.

Once the palace settles down from that summer’s Fire Festival, he invites their close friends to come visit. 

Bumi was now a rough and tumbling five year old, all bruised knees and scraped elbows. Aang and Katara had their second child now, a beautiful little girl names Kya, just barely a year old. There was talk of having another child, but they were giving themselves another breather before they tried again. Everyone knew that they were hoping to have an air bender, as they had yet to be successful on that front.

Mai and Ty Lee were still together, and the two of them had even moved to the Earth Kingdom homeland some time ago to settle down. Much to the joy of Zuko, they and Azula began reconciling years ago. It took some time, and they were all walking on eggshells for a while, but they eventually became the best of friends once again. Proper friends, this time.

Suki was still residing on Kyoshi Island, where she was training the next generation of Kyoshi Warriors. She hadn’t settled down yet herself, and she wasn’t sure she ever would. The prospect didn’t appeal to her as much as she thought it would, and she was content working with all the young women on the island and having them become her family.

Toph had yet to be married, but she is more than pleased to announce that she has a girlfriend back in Ba Sing Se the moment she arrives at the palace.

“And you didn’t bring her to come meet us?” Sokka asks with a laugh.

“No,” Toph cackles, “I was worried you weirdos would scare her off.”

None of them entirely knew what they had been called to the Fire Nation for, other than being told there was ‘important news’ to be shared with them. Each new arrival asked what this about about, and Zuko and Sokka assured them one by one that they would find out later that evening.

It all has everyone on edge and excited. Some of them, namely Toph and Aang, start throwing around silly ideas and theories about what it might be. But, even through dinner, the three at the table who know their secret don’t let it slip. Even Izumi didn’t know just yet, and both parents anxiously awaited her reaction to becoming an older sister.

Once dinner and dessert has come and gone, Zuko leads everyone to one of their private family rooms, one where they can relax after their meal.

“Alright, mister Fire Lord, you gonna spill it?” Katara asks as she hands Kya over to Aang, who coos happily down at his daughter.

“Yeah, what’s with the vague invitations?” Toph adds as she gently tussles with Bumi.

Zuko and Sokka side eye each other with a smile. “Well, we have something important to tell you all,” Zuko starts as he waves Izumi over to him. She watches her father curiously as she sits in his lap.

“Important?” she echoes back to him in a tiny voice, and he beams down at her.

“Yes, darling, very important,” he murmurs before kissing her head. She giggles and settles closely to his chest. “Something so amazing, so astounding, so _incredible_ , I think it might just knock you all off your feet,” he drawls dramatically. Izumi squeals happily at his exaggerated seriousness and bounces in his lap.

Sokka had definitely rubbed off on him in their time together, and it was really beginning to show. 

He keeps up the act for a bit, really building it up till Bumi and Izumi are both nearly in his lap and staring up at him. They laugh hysterically every time he flashes them with a grin and squeal when he makes his voice boom in his charade.

Zuko really had become a lot softer and more carefree, not only as he aged, but as he dealt more with children. He acted the way a father should around his children and others. He made them laugh and smile, and only gave discipline when absolutely necessary. Sokka had to admire how great a dad Zuko was. It made him think how silly it was that Zuko was ever afraid he would turn out like his father.

“Jeez, hothead, spit it out already!” Toph groans when Zuko manages to find one more synonym for ‘incredible.’

Zuko laughs and raises his hands in defeat. “Alright, alright,” he concedes, “We’re having another child.”

“Oh, yay!” Ty Lee cheers, clapping her hands together.

“That’s great!” Aang says with a bright smile, “I gotta say, having two kids is a lot of work, but totally worth it.”

Izumi is now jumping up and down in Zuko’s lap, eyes big and bright. “Another baby?” she asks excitedly.

“Yes, you’re going to be a big sister, sweetheart,” Sokka coos as he reaches over to ruffle her hair. 

“Are you planning to adopt another girl or a boy this time?” Suki asks as he gives Sokka a little nudge with her elbow.

Zuko and Sokka share a glance with one another, trying their best to suppress their grins.

“Well, it’s gonna be a little bit more of a surprise, this time,” Sokka says with a wave of his hands, and everyone aside from Azula stares at them curiously.

“You mean, like, you’re just gonna go out there and grab the first kid you see?” Toph asks.

That makes many of them laugh softly, including Sokka and Zuko, but they both shake their heads.

“No, not quite,” Zuko hums.

Sokka taps his chin with his knuckle then, arching his brow dramatically. He can hardly suppress his smile any longer, and he chimes in, “Do you think they’ll inherit more of my _clearly_ superior Water Tribe genes, or look more like flame boy over here?” He jabs his thumb in Zuko’s direction, and a stunned hush falls over the room.

It takes a few moments, all of the adults’ expressions shift dramatically, and then suddenly it feels like everyone in the room is screaming and shouting.

Most notably, Katara appears to be near tears, Aang looks like he’s about to shoot through the ceiling, Suki is calling Sokka a stud while congratulating them, and Toph is shouting that she hopes they’re an earth bender just to spite them.

* * *

For the rest of the pregnancy, many of them come to visit whenever they get a chance, and at the very least request that they write them every so often with an update on how they’re doing. During the last month, Iroh comes to stay with them. 

Zuko insists he doesn’t need to stay for so long, but Iroh assures that he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. He is so incredibly proud of his nephew and how far he’s come, and he wants to be present for any big milestone he can spare the time for, especially as he grew older.

He becomes a great help in keeping an eye on Izumi when Zuko needs some time to decompress, and he teaches her even more about the art of tea making. It also leaves the Fire Lord more time to get work done before he goes on his short paternity leave.

Zuko didn’t want to take any long paternity leave, and insisted he at least have access to some work while he recovered, but after listening to Katara talk about how recovering from labor could take time, he finally caved. He wouldn’t be completely off his feet, but he knew he would need time for rest, recovery, and bonding with their new child.

Izumi was completely enraptured by Zuko’s belly, and often times insisted on laying in bed with them and talking to it. She told all sorts of stories about herself, her family, and always gushed about how she couldn’t wait to show them around the palace. She places her little hands against his warm skin, and chases all the little movements that her fathers had taught her to follow so she could feel the little one responding to her. 

* * *

It’s the dead of winter when the child is born, in the middle of the night under the light of the moon.

He’s a beautiful boy with Sokka’s dark complexion, a few black wisps of hair clinging to his scalp. When he finally opens his eyes to stare up at his exhausted fathers hours later, his gaze is a piercing amber like Zuko’s.

They both cry like they’ve never cried before.

* * *

“Izumi, be nice to your brother!” Sokka shouts across the courtyard. Their little boy was trying to play with Izumi and Bumi, but the ten year olds were having none of it. “Hakoda, how about you come over here and play with Kya? Auntie Katara can teach you some water bending.”

He pouts, but shuffles on over anyway to sit beside the turtle duck pond with his cousin. 

Quite frankly, it had been a surprise when Hakoda had begun displaying signs that he was a water bender. Sokka had it in his blood, but it was a shock nonetheless. Especially to Zuko, who thought he might end up becoming a fire bender because of his amber eyes, but he’s more than pleased anyway.

“Look, watch this!” Kya says excitedly as she moves her arms back and forth, creating a small ripple across the surface. Hakoda watches her quietly, then tries it alongside her with some guidance from Katara. In just a few minutes, they create a small splash with their combined abilities, just enough to lap up over the edge of the pond.

Hakoda beams down at their handiwork, and looks up to his parents.

“Good job, kid!” Sokka cheers as he ruffles his hair.

“You two will be better than Master Katara here in no time,” Zuko says playfully, and both children flash bright smiles.

Their little garden is bustling with toddlers and children. Bumi and Izumi, the oldest, are chasing each other across the grass, playing a game of tag. At the base of the tree sit Aang and Toph, each holding their youngest in their laps, each about four years old. Tenzin is already wearing Air Nomad yellow and orange, and Lin has on a deep green tunic. They’re babbling nonsensically in words that only Aang and Toph can understand as their parents.

Zuko smiles fondly at it all. 

As a teenager, he never could have seen his life going this way.

He was so lost for so long, chasing a dream that was never really his. When he finally found his purpose, he felt truly free. 

None of them really thought life would turn out this way. Back then, when they were all just kids, their hopes were constantly challenged. They wanted to live in a better world, to save it from destruction, but time and time again there were obstacles. And yet, they overcame them. Even when the world was literally on fire, they all fought with every ounce of their energy. They knew a better world was out there, and they were willing to risk it all for just a chance at it.

The world is meant to be this way. Full of harmony and happiness and love. Zuko watches all of their children, all in their mix-matched clothes and regalia, of all bending types, existing and thriving in the same space. 

He still carries the burden of his forefathers, those who brought the world into chaos, but he is fixing all he can. The world is healing.

The world is getting back on its feet.


End file.
